Hippocratic Oath
by ArwenLalaith
Summary: House has a penchant to make enemies and the BAU team must go undercover as fellowship candidates to protect him from the latest threat. Eventual M/P.
1. Prologue

_I swear by Apollo Physician and Asclepius and Hygieia and Panaceia and all the gods and goddesses, making them my witnesses, that I will fulfil according to my ability and judgment this oath and this covenant._

_- Hippocratic Oath_

_*****_

"They want us to go undercover _where_?" Rossi asked incredulously.

"Princeton Plainsboro Teaching Hospital," Hotch repeated, "As fellowship candidates for Dr. Gregory House."

Rossi nodded, "Remind me again how exactly this came about."

"The hospital has been receiving letters threatening Dr. House's life. The police have compiled a long list of possible suspects with some kind of grievance against him. And until that list can be narrowed down, they want to have someone monitoring him at all times in case he should be attacked."

"Then why do we have to be undercover?" Morgan asked, "Can't someone just guard him?"

"Let's just say he'd be unlikely to cooperate... He has kind of a reputation..."

"So, how are we supposed to pose as believable doctors when we have no medical training of any kind?" Emily asked the most pressing question.

"We're all going to take a short course to cover the medical basics, obviously it will require some research," Hotch explained. "At no time will we be alone with a patient nor will be performing any serious procedure without the help of a senior doctor."

"Hang on," Reid said, something from the beginning of the conversation niggling at the back of his mind, "Did you say fellowship _candidates_?"

Hotch nodded. "He's just lost his team of three fellows and is holding kind of a group interview to look for fellows to replace them."

"How exactly is he going to be deciding which candidates get the job? Won't it be obvious that among a small group of job candidates, six of them have no real medical knowledge?"

"No, not really..."

******

The team walked into the lecture theatre where they had been told to meet Dr. House and the other fellowship candidates. The white coats they wore and the stethoscopes around their necks felt strangely out of place. They stopped in their tracks when they saw the crowded hall. Suddenly, the numbers they had been given made a lot of sense...

A/N: A new kind of House/CM crossover, since the first one was so much fun. As you can see, this takes place at the beginning of the fourth season of House. Updates might be kind of sporadic, since I'm still unsure how this one will work out. See my poll to give your input.


	2. House Training

_I will respect the hard-won scientific gains of those physicians in whose steps I walk, and gladly share such knowledge as is mine with those who are to follow.  
- Hippocratic Oath_

*****

The plan had been exceedingly simple and yet would be ridiculously difficult to pull off. A medical identity had been created for all of them, Dr. Cuddy had ensured that their resumes were among those House selected for call backs.

They had all spent the past few weeks attempting to transform themselves into believable doctors. Needless to say, it hadn't been conducive to such a short time frame. The week-long medical course they had taken had been grueling; they had learned basic medical skills, how to take blood samples, debfibrillate, work an MRI scanner, and perform an endoscopy, among other things. After that they had been left to their own resources to fill their heads with diagnostic knowledge.

They had resorted to studying as a group, often working late into the night, pouring over medical textbooks and journals. Not to mention that they also needed to find every shred of available information about Dr. House, his methodology, and his patient history.

"_There's a reason I didn't go to med school," Emily groaned, scrubbing a hand through her disheveled hair and yawning. They had been studying since noon and it was now nearing midnight. "I need another coffee."_

_Morgan flipped shut the massive immunology textbook in front of him after having read the passage on graft-versus-host disease five times and absorbing very little of it. "I honestly thought I'd never have to pull another all-nighter to study."_

"_I have no idea how we're going to pull this off!" JJ lamented, "There's no way he won't figure out that we're all a bunch of frauds!"_

_Rossi gave a loud snore, fast asleep, his head on the table. JJ nudged him and he suddenly sat straight up, looking about as if confused by his surroundings. His face was now emblazoned with a sketch of a tachycardic PQRST wave, pen ink having transferred from his notes to his cheek while he slept._

"_You know," Reid thought aloud, "Dr. House might not even mind that we aren't real doctors, so long as we're able to correctly diagnose the patient. From what I've read he isn't really one to follow the rules. A few weeks ago, he was treating a victim of a building collapse; he didn't have a team, so he used a hospital janitor to bounce ideas off of..."_

_The anecdote was met with several half-hearted smiles. Sure, Dr. House may not care if they weren't believable, but they did. They didn't do anything half way, if they were told to be doctors, they were going to make sure that they could play the part of medical professionals._

"_Okay, kid," Morgan glared, "You may already know everything there is to know about neurology, but some of us still need to study."_

_Emily poured everyone another cup of coffee, sloshing some of it onto the table , her movements uncoordinated from lack of sleep. "You should really go easy on the coffee," Hotch cautioned, "Your blood is probably half caffeinated by now."_

_She glared at him. "I need all the help I can get! You've got it easy! Sports medicine..." she made a noise of disdain, "When you have to memorize every hormone the body produces, then you can lecture me!" He shook off her snappish attitude; all their tempers had been running rather short as of late. "What's an epiphysis?" she asked suddenly._

"_Growth plate," Hotch answered._

_Her face buried in her hands, JJ's muffled voice moaned, "Information overload! I officially no longer remember my own name!"_

Everyone was already reaching the end of their rope by the time they actually went undercover. They had all been burning the candle at both ends, going through the process of preparing for the case, brushing up on the case details, memorizing their cover, and cramming four years worth of medical school into several days.

******

When they had first arrived at the hospital, they had met with Dr. Cuddy, the only person privy to the real reason they were there. She gave them a crash course in hospital procedure, urging them not to hesitate to come to her with even the slightest question. She had warned them that House was abrasive and uncouth, to say the least; they wondered if anyone could possibly be as brusque as they stories they had heard made him out to be.

In the locker rooms, they had stashed their weapons and donned the white coats, exchanging the symbol of power that made them respected and feared as FBI agents for one that gave respect and trust as doctors. It was a heavy burden to bear, one that they were completely unfamiliar with and alarmingly unsure about.

As they met outside the lecture theatre, fastening hospital ID to their lapels and securing pagers to their belts, Hotch passed them each a red number sign, such as might be worn while running a marathon. They didn't voice their confusion over the unorthodox system, despite the inherent lack of answers to their questions. They didn't have to wait long though, because the second they entered the room they saw close to a hundred doctors waiting patiently for their chance to show Dr. House just how talented they were.

Morgan leaned in towards Emily and whispered, "Is this a good thing or a bad thing?"

A/N: Just a gentle reminder to please see my poll and give me an opinion about what I should do with the story. I'd really like to accomodate as many people as possible.


	3. The Right Stuff

_What I may see or hear in the course of the treatment or even outside of the treatment in regard to the life of men, which on no account one must spread abroad, I will keep to myself, holding such things shameful to be spoken about._  
_- Hippocratic Oath_

*****

House stood before the roomful of fellows, twirling his cane, waiting expectantly for an answer.

"Neville Chamberlain?" guessed the one labelled 23 in reference to the large black and white photo displayed on the projection screen.

"You're fired," House said, despite the fact that seconds before he had said he wouldn't fire anyone just for getting a wrong answer. The one labelled 23 got up and left, a look of shock on his face. "Does this man look like he's ceding Czechoslovakia to a fascist dictatorship?"

"It's Buddy Ebson, the actor," said the one labelled 26, the oldest one among them, surpassing even Rossi. "He's dead. Why are we..."

House cut him off, "Buddy Ebson was the original tin man in _The Wizard of Oz_, for a day. He was diagnosed allergic to the aluminum dust in the make-up. His lungs failed, he nearly died, the question is why."

"Didn't you just say he was allergic?" asked number 11, saying what they were all thinking.

"You may not have legs, but you've got ears, I suggest you use them," House told him, referencing the fact that he was in a wheelchair. "I said he was _diagnosed _allergic. Since we are currently short exactly one interesting patient, we are going to figure out what really happened to Buddy Ebson in 1938. Now, on one hand, he's not getting any deader, on the other hand, your jobs hang in the balance. So..."

"House?" Cuddy snapped from the doorway.

"I want seven alternate diagnoses when I get back."

JJ cast a look of incredulity around the room, meeting Emily's identical gaze. House was honestly expecting them to diagnose a case that was over seventy years old? They watched as obviously heated words were exchanged between the Dean of Medicine and their 'boss'.

"Row D, you're fired," House's voice suddenly rang out.

Emily's gaze quickly snapped back to JJ's, disbelief on her face at the unexpected loss of her 'job'. But on second thought, she gave a sigh of relief, at least she wouldn't have to pretend anymore.

As she brushed past House, out the door, he flung out his cane to stop her. "Were you in Row D?"

"Yes," she said, wondering where this was going.

He not-so-subtly ran his eyes up and down her body. "My apologies, my boss says I'm being arbitrary and stupid." He turned back to the lecture theatre and called, "Row D is not fired, Row C is fired."

"Great, thank you," Emily said to him before returning to her seat. "Well, this is going to be fun," she whispered sarcastically to JJ on her way past.

*****

House hobbled back into the lecture theatre and everyone quickly returned to their seats. "The aluminum could have been tainted..." number 11 started to suggest.

Once again House interrupted, "Don't care. New patient. Thirty year old female with synaesthesia. New rules: you generate a lab report – you shred it, X-ray – you melt it. No notes, no records, nothing. As far as you're concerned, the patient is Osama Bin Laden and everyone not in this room is Delta Force. Any questions?"

"We're protecting Osama Bin Laden?" number 11 asked.

"It's a metaphor, get used to it," House snapped, rolling his eyes, "Any more questions?"

"And you're not even going to tell us her name?" Reid asked.

"You think her name might be connected to what's wrong with her?" House retorted. He limped to the door and opened it for the patient. "Here's Osama," he announced. "Now, you all have numbers, so we're going to do this alphabetically; 8, 15, and 5."

"Is the synaesthesia new?" asked number 39, from Emily's left.

"Yes," the patient answered.

"Any history of similar symptoms or psychiatric..." number 39 started to ask.

"No, nothing."

"Are you on any prescription meds or use any other drugs?" 39 asked.

"No."

"Should we trust her answers?" 39 asked House.

"What, you think I'd pull you off Buddy Ebson just for a junkie?"

"Can we trust your answers?" asked number 24.

"You have to trust someone, right?" said House.

"No," shrugged 24, "Has anyone close to you been sick lately? A family member, a co-worker?" she asked the patient.

"No, not that I'm aware of."

"You spend much time above twenty thousand feet?" number 13 asked.

"Why would you ask that?" House cut in.

"People who fly are immobile for long periods. Could be a leg clot that embolized to the brain through a PFO," 13 answered.

"That's an unusual choice," House noted.

"Well, like you said, you wouldn't interrupt Buddy with anything that wasn't."

"The patient is a frequent flyer," House saved the patient from answering. "13, 32, 39, get Osama an EEG, MRI, and an angiogram." The indicated numbers lead the patient away.

The team shared a stunned look over what had just happened. Their heads were still whirling from the speed of their first diagnostic session. They shared a look of mutual, _'Holy crap, we are so not gonna make it through this...' _

"How many of you think that Oswald acted alone?" House asked.

Hotch and Emily raised their hands, along with several others. The one labelled 6 blurted, "If by alone you mean that he was unaware that the CIA..."

"Oh, shut up," House snapped. "Split yourselves into two groups, test her blood, test her stool," he instructed as they stood to leave. "Who likes the designated hitter?" was his next question.

Rossi and Morgan were both among those that raised their hands.

"You're wrong," House told them, "You're lucky you're not fired. Two more groups, LP and cultures. Who doesn't know what a designated hitter is?"

Reid sheepishly raised his hand along with three others.

House scrawled something on a piece of paper and handed it to number 26. "Okay, here is her address, I want you to break in and find out what she's hiding."

There was a moment of silence as if he had forgotten about the remaining fellows. Number 11 cut in, "What do you want the rest of us to do?"

******

JJ wavered in and out of the heated conversation going on between the other fellows as she attempted to scrub a persistent layer of dirt off of the hubcaps on House's car. She didn't bother to look up to see who was speaking, instead trying to match voices and personalities to numbers.

"Thirty people for three openings and I want you to wash my car..." 11; always complaining.

"Work is demeaning? You're too good for this?" 18; the voice of reason.

"... We all went to med school so we wouldn't have to do an honest day's labour." 24; bitchy. "... I'm out of here. Who's with me?"

JJ gritted her teeth involuntarily as 24 and several others stomped off. There was just something about her that she didn't like already. She looked up at the sound of a heavy sigh. Only her and number 18 remained. "Well, she's pleasant..." she joked to lighten the tension.

18 rolled his eyes and shook his head, apparently working under the _'if you can't say anything nice...' _clause. I'm Jeffery Cole, by the way."

******

Reid looked skywards, towards the window of the patient's apartment, while the one labelled 10 climbed onto a dumpster in an attempt to reach it.

"Are we sure he wasn't joking? Maybe this is just a test," number 2 suggested.

"Everything's a joke and everything's a test and he wants us to do it," number 10 insisted, extending a hand to help number 26 up.

"Well, I could try, but I pulled a muscle back in 1987..." number 26 shrugged.

"I didn't waste two years repeating medical school to be arrested and deported," number 2 hissed.

Reid's heart started to pound. What if the police did show up? He didn't have his badge on him... And even if he explained that he was a federal agent undercover, he'd blow his cover to the other fellows. Not to mention that no one was likely to believe him. Oh God, an FBI agent getting arrested for breaking into a medical patient's house while undercover... he was so going to get fired.

Number 10 impatiently waved a hand in front of Reid's face to get his attention. "Hey, bean pole, are you gonna help or not?"

Rock, meet hard place. If he didn't help, the other numbers would tell House and he would get 'fired'. The whole undercover operation could be in jeopardy because he didn't help the others break into the patient's home. What if his eye alone might have picked out a detail that all the others missed and the patient died? Stupid moral conundrums...

He awkwardly heaved himself onto the dumpster while number 10 pulled a screwdriver from his bag.

******

Morgan and Rossi sterilized the equipment while numbers 15A and 15B prepared the patient for the lumbar puncture. Rossi handed the needle to one of the twins. "I think I almost envy Reid right now," he whispered to Morgan.

"It could be worse," Morgan replied, "You could be the one stabbing the patient in the spine with a huge needle..."

"Or the patient..." came the distant retort as Rossi very carefully studied the procedure, just in case House ever insisted on observing him performing an LP.

******

"There's a reason I didn't go to med school..." Emily huffed as she struggled to get the micropipette to work. Several test tubes of blood sat in the rack before her, waiting to be transferred to the centrifuge.

"Don't talk so loud," Hotch cautioned, "People might overhear..." He watched as she accidentally dropped the pipette tip into one of the samples when she tried to suck the blood up. "Here, let me do it," he said.

"Hey guys," number 6 said, bursting into the lab, "Are the samples -"

"No, we're still waiting on the results," Emily cut him off, brushing hair out of her eyes with her wrist, "The centrifuge is acting up," she lied.

******

JJ laughed as number 18 told an anecdote about his daughter, accidentally splashing water out of her bucket as her concentration wavered. The sound of clicking high heels against the pavement made them stop and turn. Instantly, the amiable air had vanished as they identified the source of the noise.

"Change your mind?" JJ said, voice icy.

"No," number 24 replied, not bothering to explain any further.

"Then why are you here?" Cole asked.

"Never intended to quit..."

"Then why did you -" Cole started.

"Intended to get everyone else to quit." JJ and Cole exchanged a look, clearly sharing the same thoughts likening her to a female canine. "Get off the car."

"I need to clean it," Cole snapped, "_We _need to clean it."

24 jangled a set of keys in her hand. "I stole his keys. We'll take it to a car wash." Noting the unsure look that passed between the others, she justified, "He's got people breaking into a woman's apartment, obviously respecting personal property isn't one of the rules."

******

"The high pressure and oxygen will flush the carbon monoxide from your system," number 6 explained to the patient as Emily, Cole, and number 24 prepared the hyperbaric chamber. "This much oxygen for too long can have some toxic effects, so we'll do this in cycles." He pulled the mask over the patients mouth and nodded to Emily to turn the oxygen on.

Things seemed to be going fine, until the shrill beeping of the pulse ox sounded. Emily looked anxiously to the source and scanned the PQRST wave momentarily before deciding she could learn nothing useful from it with her lack of knowledge.

"I think she's having a heart attack," number 6 called to the other numbers.

_'Think? That's not something reassuring for a doctor to say,' _Emily thought to herself. She looked to the patient just in time to see her pass out. The other fellows started calling orders and she struggled with what to do to maintain the semblance of looking like she knew what she was doing. She decided to start CPR, compressing the patient's chest, while they waited for the defibrillator.

6 arrived shortly thereafter, paddles in hand. "Clear," he called as he went.

"Are you crazy?" Cole shouted, "You can't use those, we're in a hyperbar..."

"Clear," he said again, obviously not one to be reasoned with.

Emily jumped back from the patient while Cole quickly turned off the oxygen. The paddles buzzed with charge as he shocked her. Flames leapt from her chest and Emily stepped back further, shielding her face against the heat.

"She's on fire!" Emily heard little else as the panic bells started going off in her head. This day was off to a terrible start, she'd been 'fired', quite possibly screwed up a blood test, and lit a patient on fire, all before lunch... It couldn't get much worse. She did, however, catch the lament of, "We are so fired." And she whole-heartedly agreed. So did the sprinklers apparently, she thought to herself as she got drenched.

******

"Is anyone else bothered by the lengths we're going to in order to lie to the government?" Reid wondered aloud as he and the others ate a hurried lunch.

"I'm bothered by the fact that we're going to have to take more of this torture," Morgan snapped.

"At least you weren't there when we set the patient on fire," Emily replied. She glared at Morgan as he covertly snickered at the mention of the incident. "It's not funny," she insisted, "She was literally _on fire_, not just smoldering."

"Why didn't you stop him when he brought the charged paddles into the oxygen rich environment?" Reid asked.

Emily rounded on him, her gaze icy. "Because I didn't know that would happen," she hissed, "And if you say a word about how you would have known, _you're_ going to be our next patient."

"I'm sorry," he squeaked nervously. He instantly brightened, "I don't think this is all that bad, it's actually quite fun seeing what life would have been like had I decided to go to med school. How many chances do you get at a real-life 'through the looking glass' experience?"

JJ aimed a kick at his shin under the table. "You're really annoying when I'm sleep deprived and stressed out."

******

"Getting a patient drunk is _not _a medical procedure," JJ hissed to Hotch and Emily as they moved through the hallways towards the patient's room.

"It's not like we have any say in the matter," Emily reminded her, "We don't have any jurisdiction."

"It's things like this that make people send death threats," JJ insisted.

"If you have such a problem with it, then why did you agree to be a part of the test?" Hotch asked.

"Someone responsible needs to be there," she snapped, "God knows House can't be trusted."

"It's things like that that are going to get _you _fired," Emily told her. JJ scowled as she slid open the door to the patient's room where House and a bottle of tequila were awaiting.

House smiled when he saw her, pouring the liquor into four shot glasses, and sloshing just as much onto the table in the process. He started half-singing, "Tequila; goes down easy, Lord it'll sneak up on you fast. Tequila; great big buzz in a little bitty glass."

******

"Who needs a coffee?" Morgan sighed, stifling a yawn as he and the others left the lecture theatre, amazed that all of them had made the first major cut.

There was a simultaneous echo of affirmation. "It's almost 9:00 at night," Hotch reminded.

"Yeah," Emily piped up, "And I'd like not to die in a fiery car crash on the way back to the hotel when I fall asleep at the wheel..."

The case wrapped up with a breast implant surgery to disguise the scars from the surgery to cut lesions out of the patient's lungs, a diagnosis of von Hippel-Lindau, and lying to the patient about having informed NASA of her condition. Not to mention lying to the head of the hospital, lying to House, lying to each other, and lying to the government. And getting drunk at work. And getting the patient drunk. And breaking into private property.

"I think, right now, I'd actually prefer that," Rossi quipped.

A/N: Okay, now, I was honestly never planning on rewriting the original episodes in which House tested the fellows... But, in order to set up some things that will be coming up later in the story arc, it was necessary. More like this are to follow, so please excuse the liberal artistic license I've had to take to make these work. Oh, and House's song about tequila is the aptly named "Tequila" by Brooks and Dunn.


	4. 97 Seconds

_I will apply dietetic measures for the benefit of the sick according to my ability and judgment; I will keep them from harm and injustice._  
_- Hippocratic Oath_

******

The prospective fellows sat impatiently in the lecture theatre, waiting for House to show up. They began to get antsy and fuses grew short, many started arguing amongst themselves. "This is ridiculous," hissed Emily, "He was supposed to be here hours ago and we're stuck waiting for him to show."

"While we've been sitting here, someone could have easily targeted him," Morgan added, "This was a stupid plan, we aren't around enough to protect him because we're off playing his stupid games."

There was a small commotion as Amber once again brought on the theatrics and pulled off her number. "He's obviously not coming. I'm going home," she declared as she started walking away.

It was clear the same thought was crossing the mind of several of the others. "Nobody follow her!" JJ warned loudly, "She pied-piper'ed nine people right out of a job last week." Amber stared daggers at her, but said nothing.

House chose that moment to make his beyond fashionably late entrance, slamming the door emphatically to open it, a large stack of files in his arms which he promptly started handing out. "New patient. Thirty-seven year old male, suffers from severe ascending muscle weakness."

"Why were you late?" Cole challenged.

"To see who'd put up with it," House shrugged.

"So, you mean if we'd left, we'd have been fired?" Reid asked.

"No, I was going to fire everyone who stuck around, but since _everyone _stuck around..." With everyone now scanning the file, he continued, "Twenty-eight percent curvature of the spine has caused reduced lung capacity and has reduced bone mineral density."

"Patient has spinal muscular atrophy, it's genetic, incurable. This is not a diagnostic mystery," 13 pointed out.

"You have just given state secrets to the enemy," House whispered conspiratorilly.

Now everyone was intrigued, if only for show. "What enemy?" 13 humored him.

"New patient, new rules. Today, you're going to split yourselves into two teams. The first to figure out what's threatening to deprive the patient of the twenty or so miserable years he's got left with SMA gets to keep their jobs." The fellows exchanged various looks, some challenging, some suspicious, and yet others thrilled by the competition. "Take off your numbers," House snapped, "You look stupid." He paused, about to leave the room. "And I think I know who you are by now."

"Wait," Kutner said, "How do you want us to split up?"

House turned back, "Good question..." He paused for a moment, lost for an identity, before making one up, "Overly Excited Former Foster Kid. There's sixteen of you. I was thinking... six against six? No, wait..." He sarcastically pondered for a moment.

Figuring if they were going to be facing off, may as well make the competition interesting, Emily suggested, "How about women versus men?"

"Excellent suggestion, Overly Ambitious Daddy's Girl," House said, "More interesting than evens versus odds, less interesting than shirts against skins. If your sex organs dangle, you're the Confederates; if your sex organs are aesthetically pleasing, you're the Yanks." Once again he turned to leave.

Amber interrupted, "Dr. House?" He paused and turned back. "I'd like to be on the men's team."

House eyed her with suspicion. "Do your sex organs dangle..." Again he paused to think of a name, before deciding on the one that everyone had been silently calling her since day one, "Cut-throat Bitch?"

"Not yet," she shrugged, "You've never hired more than one female on your team before; if you're going to purge an entire gender, it isn't going to be the danglers."

"Sounds logical," House said, "If you don't think about it for more than three seconds. But I just told you that if the danglers lose, they're out... So I can only assume you're hiding the real reason." He eyed her speculatively, trying to work through her reasoning. "You don't think the women will be aggressive enough, will be good enough at science. They'll be too emotional."

Amber impatiently interrupted his verbal thoughts, "Can I switch teams?"

House shrugged, obviously not caring, "If the danglers are okay, I'm okay." This time he actually made it out the doors.

The fellows followed shortly after, both teams purposefully attempting to segregate Amber. She was attempting to keep pace with the men, trying to convince them of her position. "We're not okay," snapped Dobson, formerly known as number 26.

"I get it," Amber placated, "You don't like me because maybe I'm a little bit..." She searched for the right word, "Competitive."

"Manipulative," Morgan said under his breath, but fully intending for her to hear.

"Cut-throat Bitch is your official title," Kutner added.

"It's a game, you can either play for fun or play to win. If you want to win, you want cut-throat."

"No thank you," Rossi said, attempting to be polite, but entirely of the same sentiment as the others.

******

Emily was on her way through the clinic, running to the pharmacy for her team to pick up the ivermectin to treat their theory when suddenly the lights flickered sharply as if the power grid were malfunctioning. She stopped in her tracks as House emerged from one of the exam rooms, shouting for a crash cart. As she peered around him into the room, she noticed an unconscious body slumped on the floor, a switchblade protruding from an electrical socket in the wall, scorch marks licking the plaster. She looked back up to House, not at all liking the look on his face as he studied the electrocuted body. But she said nothing, continuing towards the patient's room.

"Killed by an assistive device," the patient was remarking as she slid the door shut behind her, "At least my death would be ironic."

"I think when you went to Thailand you picked up a threadworm called strongyloides. They usually go up through your feet," 13 explained their theory.

"I didn't do a lot of walking on the beach," the patient commented wryly. Obvious, considering he was confined to a wheelchair and required a service dog. His dog, Hoover, seemed to feel the need to comment on that, barking as if to emphasize the point.

"But I assume you did have someone lay you down on the sand. Bare back, bare legs – increases exposure tenfold over bare feet," Emily reasoned. She set the pill cup on his bed tray. "Two pills, you'll be all better."

******

Amber strode purposefully into the lab where the entirety of the male team was busy running tests, working by the less subtle means of running as many tests as they could think of. "Got a diagnosis yet?" she asked briskly.

"Get out of here," Taub snapped.

She didn't bother to follow the terse command. "I give you a move House will love, straight from one of his former fellows and you let me join your team," she bartered.

"You're too late," Morgan shrugged, transferring vials between machines, "We already have our diagnosis."

"He's lying because he wants you to go away," Cole explained, adding curtly, "So do I."

"How do we know you're not a double agent?" Hotch asked, "Find out what we're thinking, then go back to the women?"

"Because I don't care what you're thinking. You know why I want to be on your team? Because you're idiots. If I can get the women out of the competition, I'm in... And so are two of you."

That seemed to strike a cord with the men, it was, after all, a competition. Taub nodded his agreement before turning to the others to take a silent vote. Split down the middle, Dobson and Brennan noncommittal, Cole and Kutner agreeing. He turned to Hotch, Reid, Rossi, and Morgan; they shrugged, not really getting an opinion since they weren't actually in it to win the job. Taub turned back to Amber, giving in.

******

Reid pulled his messenger bag over one shoulder, cramming the last test results into a file; he had drawn the short straw and been elected to wait for the last test results, the ones that took hours to run, meaning that everyone else had long since departed for the hotel. As he headed for the doors he heard a hurried clicking of heels on the linoleum. He turned around to see Amber hurrying after him. Internally he let out an exasperated sigh, he didn't want to be mean, but she really was a difficult person to get along with.

"Dr. Reid," she called, "Wait up." He stopped and waited for her to join him. "I was wondering if you wanted to grab some dinner with me?" She must have sensed his hesitation, because she added, "I wanted to discuss the case."

Reid nervously shifted his weight from foot to foot. "Isn't that something we should really be doing as a team?"

She raised an eyebrow and studied him. "We don't need them," she said dismissively, "We work together to come up with an answer, save our team, we're both in. _We _have no competition..."

Reid looked towards the doors and back at Amber, "I was kinda supposed to meet someone..." He wasn't lying, the team was supposed to be starting a rough profile of whoever was threatening House, based on House's personality. "Consult on another patient," he lied. She eyed him suspiciously, but didn't press the issue, standing back to allow him to leave.

******

The women left the lecture theatre to put the patient on a tilt table to stress his system, anxious to prove that they were right about the strongyloides. The men plus Amber continued to sit there, House standing before them, glaring at them like naughty school children. "Ten against six," he said, "Two of the men are going to have to join the women's team." All of the men quickly raised their hands, volunteering to get away from Amber, who sat there scowling. "On the other hand," House shrugged, "One of the men isn't an actual doctor, so... I guess it's pretty fair."

Most of the men looked about appalled, as if they could visually determine who was the fraud. Reid, Rossi, Morgan, and Hotch all exchanged a surreptitious nervous glance, wondering which one of them had been discovered.

"Men, you're in the penalty box," House announced.

"Who's not the doctor?" Taub asked.

"Glad you asked that," House said, but just as quickly blowing past it with no real intention of answering, "Reason I'm penalizing you is time management. In diagnostics, you're always working against the clock. The women came up with a theory and they treated the patient. You just sat around in a lab, hoping a series of blind tests would give you a theory. You wasted the patient's time, now I'm going to waste yours."

******

The men all sat around House's office, out of their minds bored. "Who the hell isn't a doctor?" Taub asked again, apparently fixated on the question.

"House said we can't talk," Reid reminded.

"He meant we can't talk about the case," Taub snapped.

"House is just jerking us around, that's what he does," Dobson insisted.

"You're not curious?" Taub asked, "There's only one reason you wouldn't be curious..."

Amber piped up, ever one to bend the rules, "We should talk about the case. We're being punished for wasting time, maybe we shouldn't be wasting this time."

"Close that door," Brennan snapped, "You're going to get us all fired."

"We need to find a link between fainting and trouble swallowing," Amber narrated, looking directly at Reid as if speaking only to him.

"We need to know if it's dysphasia or full-blown achalasia," Taub said.

"Paraganglioma," Reid suggested.

Taub looked at him as if he were dense, "How would a neoplastic growth in his abdomen..."

"Not his abdomen," Reid cut him off, "In his neck. A carotid body tumor causes trouble swallowing. Food presses against the vagus nerve and causes the fainting." Amber smiled and nodded, seeing the sense in the idea. Anything to prove the women wrong and keep her job.

"So, if this guy has cancer, we get to keep our jobs and if he's healthy, we're fired?" Cole asked incredulously.

"We need the CT to prove it," Amber said.

"And we need the women not to figure it out while we're sitting here," Rossi remarked, more to himself than the other fellows.

"Does House's computer have a built-in microphone?" Kutner asked suddenly, gesturing towards the webcam that was directed towards them.

Amber smiled deviously and slowly crawled under the desk, keeping out of sight of the camera, and making her exit onto the balcony to go run their test.

******

Sixteen bunsen burners jetting blue flame into the air sat upon the table at the front of the theatre while the fellows waited to see what this was leading up to. House stood before them, a dew rag on his head and a staff in his hand. "Thank you all for coming to Tribal Council." He looked out at the two teams and realized one player was missing, "Where's your team's tenth man?" he asked the men.

"She went rogue, broke the rules," Cole explained.

"You have also sinned," House reprimanded, "The rules said no talking."

"I told her not to talk," Cole shrugged.

"We were trying to save a man's life," Taub piped up.

"Key word being _trying_," House said, "Tilt table test confirmed that you guys were wrong. You're fired." The women's team began celebrating and the men cast into disappointment as Amber burst through the door. "The prodigal son returneth," House said, "You're also fired."

Amber debated the strongyloides diagnosis with House, insisting that the patient has scleroderma. Emily turned to JJ and whispered, "How the hell are we supposed to do this on our own? We need the rest of the team, Lord knows we don't know what we're doing..."

House, clearly finished arguing with Amber, turned back to the women, "You ladies have the honor to give the patient a feeding tube, discharge him, and show up for work tomorrow. The rest of you..." he said, turning to the men, "You're a disappointment. You make me want to stop dangling."

******

JJ and Morgan made their way through the halls, JJ venting about Amber. "I hate her, I hate her, I hate her! She has no regard for rules or authority. She refuses to accept that she's been fired and does more tests to prove that she's right because everyone else is a moron... She's a -" She paused, searching for the right adjective.

"Cut-throat bitch?" Morgan supplied. "Listen, Jayje, you need to lay off Amber. Yeah, she's hard to get along with, but if she hadn't been so determined we never would have found out about the green blood and we wouldn't know that his kidneys were shutting down. She could very well have saved the patient's life. Not to mention saved the case, now that the men have been unfired, it would have been next to impossible to catch the unsub if it were just you and Emily."

"So just because she found something, it's okay to break the rules?" JJ hissed.

"Jayje, chill out," Morgan repeated, "Need I remind you that you don't actually want the job... So what do you care if she gets hired."

"She could be the unsub," JJ insisted, "Narcissistic, unscrupulous, no regard for rules..."

Morgan cut her off before she could convince herself that Amber was the unsub, "No, she wants this job more than anyone, if she kills House, she doesn't get the job."

JJ glared at him and was about to say something more when Amber came sprinting down the hall past them, heading for House's office. "Speak of the devil..." JJ whispered.

All of a sudden there was a blinding flash of light and once again the electricity jumped for several seconds. Amber, Morgan, and JJ all stood frozen before House's office, staring in horror at the tableau before them. House slumped on the ground unconscious, a switchblade sticking out of a wall socket, the acrid tingle of smoke filling their noses, burn marks infiltrating the wall and his hand.

Amber was the first to break free, with a cry of, "Dr. House!" She ran to his side, shortly followed by JJ and Morgan. She checked his pulse and started CPR with Morgan's help. JJ dashed to the nurse's station, calling for a crash cart.

******

Despite their 'boss's' alleged suicide attempt, the teams were forced to continue focusing on their real patient, seeing as they no longer had any legitimate theories. Under Wilson's guidance, they switched him onto medication for eosinophilic pneumonia.

"I don't think it's working," the patient insisted.

"Try and relax," 13 coaxed.

"You must be wrong." He continued to struggle for breath for several more moments before asking, "Could you get Hoover?" Emily carefully lifted the dog from the sofa and laid him down on the bed. The dog curled up beside his master, whining sadly. "Can you put my hand on his head?" the patient asked. Emily obliged. "It's okay," the patient reassured the dog, "Don't worry, I'm not scared."

He struggled to breath, each breath getting harsher and raspier until he stopped altogether. The monitor flat-lined, producing a constant wail.

"Time of death?" 13 asked.

As she and Emily went about tidying the body before it was taken to the morgue, House came hobbling into the room, still wearing his hospital gown. "What did we miss?" he asked.

"If we knew, he wouldn't be dead," 13 said sadly.

"So that's it?" House asked, "You're just gonna give up?"

"No, we were defeated," Emily reminded, "It's over."

"Patient presented with syncope," 13 humored him, "We thought it was threadworms, gave him ivermectin."

"The patient didn't respond to antibiotics or steroids," House continued.

Emily didn't bother to play along, out of answers. She moved over to where the dog was lying, seemingly sullen and depressed. She shook him gently, trying to get him to stir. "You okay, boy?"

Suddenly, House was interested. "What's wrong with the dog?"

Emily felt for a pulse under the dog's foreleg. "He's dead," she said quietly.

House became tense with realization. "Did you watch him take the pills?" he asked Emily, who looked at him blankly, "The ivermectin, did you watch the patient put them in his mouth and swallow them?"

"I don't know, I think so..."

House began moving things, searching for something. He thought aloud as he did so, "The dog's an English shepherd, has the MDR-1 gene. If you give a dog with the MDR-1 gene ivermectin, it'd be fatal..." He stopped as he uncovered the object of his search.

Emily picked up the chewed pill cup, a horrified look on her face as she absorbed the enormity of what she had done.

"Look familiar?" House asked, "I think the last time you saw it, it didn't have that dead dog's teeth marks on it."

"I just put it on the bed tray to get him some water..." Emily explained.

House's tone became sharp, "When I asked you if you watched the patient swallow the pills, the right answer was 'no'."

******

Emily sat vigil beside the patient's body in the morgue as House quietly entered the room. She waited until he was beside her before speaking, "As soon as the pathologist cut into the lungs, we saw the threadworms." She sighed heavily. "I keep replaying it in my mind. Did I drop the pills when I put them on the bed tray? Did I knock them over when I turned to leave?"

"You know he'd be alive, his dog'd be alive..."

"I know."

"You forced us to act on a false assumption," House told her.

"I know," she repeated listlessly.

"Everything we built from that step on, every test, every theory, every treatment..."

Emily's temper finally flared and she whipped around to meet his gaze. "I know! Forget the lecture and fire me already!"

"If I was going to fire you, I wouldn't be giving you the lecture. I know you're not going to let anything like this ever happen again. I'll see you tomorrow."

Emily sighed heavily and left the morgue as quickly as she could without breaking into a run. When she burst through the doors, Morgan was there waiting for her. "How are you holding up?" he asked quietly.

"I didn't get fired..." she said, avoiding the question.

Morgan studied her for a moment before finishing her sentence, "But you wish you did..."

She turned to face him, tears glittering in her eyes, "I can't do this! I killed a man and his dog because I was careless, because I was stupid..."

"You're not," Morgan insisted, "You simply made a mistake, any one of us could have done the same, even a doctor. But you're not one, you couldn't have known..."

"You're right," she said, heat in her voice, "I'm not a doctor and I don't want to keep pretending to be one if it means that more people might die because of it." Tears trickled down her cheeks and her breath hitched in her throat. Morgan pulled her into his arms as she broke down sobbing.

A/N: Okay, I know, there's been a lot of attributing things the fellows said to members of the team and totally switching around events, but trust me when I say it's necessary. And even though House fired most of the women's team in the episode, in this one he didn't fire anyone.


	5. Guardian Angels

_I will remember that I remain a member of society, with special obligations to all my fellow human beings, those sound of mind and body as well as the infirm._  
_- Hippocratic Oath_

*****

JJ emerged from the women's locker room, the men were solemnly waiting outside the door. "I don't know if Em is up for this..." she whispered to the others, "She's still blaming herself for what happened to the last patient. She's worried it will happen again."

"Why didn't she say anything?" Hotch asked, "She doesn't have to do this if it's too much for her to handle."

Morgan scoffed, "Have you ever know her to give up? She'll keep pushing on just to prove to herself that she can."

At that, Emily came out of the locker room, looking considerably worse for wear. She looked like she hadn't slept in weeks and her eyes still bore the appearance of recent crying. She looked at each of them in turn, daring them to say something, to tell her that maybe this wasn't a good idea. And though they were all thinking it, no one said anything, knowing that she had to work this out on her own.

They joined the other fellows waiting in the lecture theatre to see the latest case House had managed to scrounge. Everyone looked up at the sound of the door opening, seeing if it were House; Emily seemed shaken by the sudden attention, as if she felt like they were silently judging her, but she quickly masked whatever pain she may have been feeling and glared at them challengingly.

Waiting until she had taken a seat, Amber came over and took the spot next to Emily. Feigning concern, she softly asked, "How're you doing?"

"I'm fine," Emily said, a little tersely.

"If you ask me," Amber whispered conspiratorially, "It's more the guys' fault than yours. And House isn't blameless either; if he hadn't pitted us all against each other..."

Emily cut her off, "It was my fault, my mistake."

From the front of the room, a phone started to ring and everyone turned to look at it. "Was that always there?" Taub asked.

Brennan shrugged and answered it, listening for several moments before putting it on speaker and whispering to the others, "It's House."

"Good morning, Angels," House's voice emitted from the speaker, "As you will see from the file, we have quite the interesting case. Not often do you get a patient who sees dead people."

Everyone looked about in confusion. "What file?" Kutner asked.

"What the hell?" came House's voice after a second of silence, "I gave it to Bosley a half hour ago."

"It was not a half hour, it was ten minutes. And he made copies of the ER records first," Cameron's voice reminded, slightly more distorted as if she were farther away from the phone.

"When Bosley drags his ancient ass in there..." House started.

Dobson's entrance cut him off. "I'm here. Twenty-four year old funeral cosmetician suffered a grand mal seizure at work." He started to hand the files out to the others. "She had a vision of being raped by a cadaver before passing out. Seizure rules out psychiatric illness. No history of epilepsy, head trauma, or drug use."

"Could be a tumor to the temporal lobe," Amber suggested.

"Not with a normal CT scan," Taub reminded.

"You mean it appeared normal to the doc in the ER," Amber retorted.

"Funeral home prep rooms are filled with toxic chemicals," Rossi said.

"And cadavers," added Brennan, "Everybody in that place obviously died from something."

Suddenly Taub burst out, "I have a question, is he the one who's not a doctor?" He pointed towards Dobson as if House could see who he was indicating. The team shared a curious glance, wondering what would have made Taub suspect Dobson and why whatever it was hadn't also lead him to them.

Dobson ignored his implication. "Bullets aren't contagious. But infections, parasites..."

Taub interrupted, "You said one of us wasn't a doctor and you called him a fraud."

"He's not a doctor," House said, "Continue Boz." This time the look was mutual incredulity, the team unable to believe that there had been another fellow without an actual medical license. Not only that, but House had picked him out as the one fraud while they went on completely undetected. It was almost too good to be true.

"Could be an STD..." Dobson went on.

Taub once again interrupted, unable to move on, "Why isn't he fired?"

House seemed to either be getting irritated or losing focus as the sound of telephone buttons being pressed sounded throughout the room. "Oh, you're breaking up," he rasped, "I'm going into a tunnel." Then, regaining his focus, called for Cole, "Dark religious nut."

Cole looked up, annoyed by the jibe, "What did you call me?"

"I'm sorry, what do you people want to be called this week?"

"Cole."

"I'm never gonna remember that," House said, "Take Bosley, old guy number two, and the other visible minorities to the funeral home." Kutner and Morgan shared a look at the 'other visible minorities' comment. They stood, following Cole, Dobson, and Rossi out the door. House continued, "The rest of you young white people, the world is your oyster. Get an MRI with contrast, EEG, LP, and blood panel. And, Angels, be careful."

******

Once again, they conversed with House over the speakerphone. "Cadavers were clean, so is her food. It's all organic unprocessed crap. It's gotta be the embalming fluid, ethanol can have psychoactive effects," Cole said into the phone, sharing their findings.

"Bosley!" House said loudly, "Tell whoever's talking he's an idiot." Dobson stood there waveringly, looking between Cole and the phone. House, not hearing someone being called an idiot, repeated, "Bosley, either tell him he's an idiot or tell me why I'm wrong."

He turned to Cole and apologetically said, "You're an idiot."

"You actually think that I'd take a patient who had a seizure in a funeral home if the ER hadn't already ruled out embalming fluid?" House explained.

Dobson cut in, "I found something in the mortuary's files from 2005. A forty-eight year old male's cause of death was listed as pneumonia, but the symptoms in the autopsy report didn't fit; confusion, memory loss, depression..."

"Mad cow," House said, his curiosity piqued, "Very cool."

"She's a vegetarian and only ate organic vegetables at that..." Morgan reminded.

"Tell _him _he's an idiot," House once again ordered Dobson.

Dobson turned to Morgan and explained, "The disease can be spread by brain tissue."

"Which is very cool," House added, "Run with it."

Hotch piped up, "So, because the answer might be 'cool', you want us to do a brain biopsy on a twenty-four year old woman?"

"No," House scoffed, "Because the answer is something cool, I want you to do a brain biopsy on a forty-eight year old dead guy."

The fellows all exchanged astonished looks. "The guy's already been buried," JJ reminded.

"We dig him up," Kutner said excitedly. Amber glared at him, looking particularly non-plussed.

"I am not digging up a body without a court order," Taub said firmly.

"Don't think of it as digging up a body," House suggested, "Think of it as keeping another one from being buried."

******

From the top of the grave, several flashlights shone sickly jaundiced cones of light into the muddy pit. Hotch pulled himself over the ledge then reached down and offered a hand to help pull JJ out; from the depths of the hole, Morgan leaned on his shovel, wiping beads of sweat from his forehead with a muddy hand, and asked, "Alright, who's up?"

As if wanting to emphasize the macabre event, a suitably eerie storm was brewing in the distance. Ominous grey clouds bubbled on the horizon, cooking up a denizen of a storm. Thunder hammered angrily, punctuating the flashes of lightning illuminating their work.

"Not me," Taub said. As of yet, he remained the only fellow whose skin and scrubs remained dirt-free.

13 glared at him, angrily denouncing, "You haven't done any digging yet."

"I'm a surgeon," he justified, "If anything happens to these hands, I'm screwed." Then, he threw Dobson under the bus, "Let Bosley do it. As long as he can keep folding laundry, his career won't..."

Dobson urgently silenced him, "Shh! Someone's coming!"

Everyone tensed, turning in the direction of the footsteps, a palpable air of fear and suspense. The sound of shifting dirt in the pit stopped, but the flashlights continued to flicker, shaken by nervous hands. "Shouldn't we be running?" Reid half whispered, half squeaked.

Kutner, considerably more calmly, replied in a whisper, "If it's a cop, run. Security guard, I say we take him down." Reid said nothing, only giving a second nervous squeak in reply as the shadowy figure continued purposefully towards them.

Then, the shadows vanished, along with the suspense, as the figure came into focus, revealing itself to be Amber. She smiled apologetically and said, "Sorry I'm late."

"Where the hell have you been?" Taub demanded.

"Oh, I got lost," she shrugged.

"Been here over three hours," Kutner said, rolling his eyes as he leapt into the grave.

"Really lost," she emphasized, adding, "I brought coffee and donuts."

From inside the grave there was a loud clank of metal hitting something other than dirt. Kutner looked up and dramatically announced, "Honey, I'm home." He used his hands to shift away a layer of dirt from the surface of the coffin.

"Get the crowbar," Brennan ordered.

"No," Kutner quickly refuted, "There's not enough room to maneuver a crowbar down here." With that, he sharply brought his pickaxe down on the coffin. There was a collective intake of breath from the others as they looked on in pious shock.

"Oh, God help us," muttered Rossi, crossing himself.

Kutner peeled the splintered wood away to make the hole larger. Peering in, an expression of confusion crossed his face, "What the hell?"

"What is it?" JJ asked nervously.

"Ankles, they buried the guy the wrong way around." Again, he swung his pickaxe and made another hole in the coffin, eliciting much the same response as the first time.

******

The team grabbed a quick cup of coffee from the cafeteria on their way to the lab to test the brain tissue taken from the previous night's grave robbing adventure. At the sound of heels on the tile, clearly at a quick pace, Reid wheeled about nervously to locate the source, earning him several raised eyebrows and questioning looks. "Jumpy much?" Morgan said.

Reid sighed, seeing it was only Cuddy, "I thought it was Amber looking for me..."

The looks became more questioning. "Why would Cut-throat Bitch be looking for you?" JJ asked, a not so well hidden tinge of resentment in her voice.

"She cornered me on the last case, asked if I wanted to have dinner with her," he explained.

There were several simultaneous sounds of coffee being choked on. "Say what?" Morgan asked sharply.

"She said she wanted to," he hooked air quotes around the statement, "'discuss the case'."

JJ's face scrolled through several emotions, switching from shock to jealousy to anger to resentment. "What did you say?"

"No," Reid scoffed.

He was about to justify himself when Morgan added, "Because he's scared of her."

"I am not!" Reid said, wounded, "I'm just..."

"Shh!" Emily cut him off, "I want to hear this..." she said, seeing that Cuddy was about to reprimand House for something. Had she wanted to, she would have came up with a perfectly reasonable justification for eavesdropping on the person they were supposed to be protecting, but it seemed that everyone else was piqued enough not to refuse.

"The doctor's lounge is covered in mud..." Cuddy said, waiting for an explanation.

"13 and Cut-throat Bitch had a disagreement and the cafeteria was out of jell-o," House shrugged, giving her a _'what else could we do?' _look.

"There were pickaxes," she added, "Either you had them dig up a body or you're building a railroad."

"A little tiny piece of his brain," House justified, "Seemed a waste, he wasn't using it anymore."

"That's your defense?" Cuddy asked incredulously, "'We just dismembered him'?" He shrugged again and she snapped, "Get that mess in the shower area cleaned up."

"I know just the guy..."

House met the fellows in the lab shortly afterwards, pushing a mop and bucket before him. "You guys don't wipe your feet when you come in the house?" He parked the mop in front of Taub. "Doctor's lounge, let's go."

"Why me?" Taub asked, scandalized.

"Well, I can't ask the black guys or one of the chicks to do it, that would be insensitive."

"And you can't ask Bosley because that'd look like you only hired the non-doctor to do non-doctor stuff," Taub snapped.

"You keep stalling, you're still gonna clean up, but I won't let you have the mop," House told him. Taub gave in and snatched the mop, leaving the lab with a scowl on his face.

******

"You've already done everything," the patient said.

"We may have missed something," Hotch told her, prepping her for another test.

"I just want to go home," she insisted, "I'm sure I'm fine now."

"Reena," her mother said gently, "The doctors know best."

"You had some serious symptoms," 13 told her, "The seizures..."

"If I have another one, I'll come right back, okay?"

"If you have it while you're driving..." her mother argued.

"You can drive me," the patient said to her mother, "Make sure I take it easy."

Hotch and 13 exchanged confused glances. "Who can?" 13 asked.

The patient looked between the doctors and her mother, "My mother."

"Your mother's here?" Hotch asked.

"What are you talking about?" the patient asked, "She's right there." She indicated where her mother was sitting, following her gaze, Hotch and 13 see nothing and share a worried glance.

******

Amber and Emily were once again running tests, getting vials of blood to run gel electrophoresis tests for genetic conditions that might explain her hallucination/delusion. "Now what are you testing for?" the patient asked, "Or should I ask what you're not testing for?"

"Well, we could narrow it down if you could remember what your mother died from," Amber told her.

The patient snapped, "My mother is not dead, she's sitting right there."

"Do you think we're lying to you?" Amber snapped.

"Leave it alone," Emily said softly, "Convincing her that her mother's dead isn't gonna make her better, just miserable."

"You lose your mother?" Amber asked. Emily looked at her with an _'I can't believe you just said that!' _glare. Amber refused to acknowledge her, turning back to the patient and asking, "Do you think we're trying to trick you? Why would we do that?"

"Because you're mean," the patient snapped, "And you're not good at your job."

Her mother said gently, "Reena, stop, you're being cruel."

"They're wasting time," she said to her mother, "Doing exactly what the guy in the wheelchair said they'd do."

Emily felt her blood freeze in her veins, turning to look at the patient with shock written across her face. "A guy in a wheelchair was here?"

"You know who I'm talking about. He's been hanging around ever since they brought me in, complaining about how incompetent everyone is. Said you killed his dog." Emily scrubbed a hand through her hair, obviously shaken, before excusing herself from the room.

******

Emily sighed aggravatedly as once again she wound up treating the patient with Amber. Doing her best to ignore her, Emily turned to the patient and explained, "When your retina sees something, they send electrical signals to your brain. This machine will pick up those signals, if the signals are misfiring, it will confirm that your hallucinations were caused by..."

The patient cut her off, "They're not hallucinations. Tell her, Mom."

Her mother told her gently, "Honey, they're doctors, they must know what they're doing."

"If they know what they're doing, how'd they kill that poor man's dog?" she snapped.

Emily shut her eyes and turned away, taking several steps further into the sight lab. Amber followed after her, attempting to bait her, "Come on, this has got to be freaking you out a little bit."

"I appreciate your concern," Emily said, slightly sarcastic.

"There's nothing to be ashamed of here. If the ghost of a man you killed doesn't screw with your head, there's something wrong with your head." Emily sighed and gave Amber a glacial glare, she started to push past her to return to the test when she noticed a blue dog collar sitting on a table nearby. Slightly hesitant, she picked it up. Amber shrunk back, "See, that freaks me out..."

"Someone must have left it here," Emily rationalized.

"Oh, absolutely," Amber said, voice dripping with sarcasm, "That makes sense. The dog was in here getting his eyes checked and forgot to put his jewelry back on."

******

Another wrong turn. The fellows struggled to come up with a diagnosis while House and Cole debated religion and science, House baiting him, purposefully pushing his limits. "But the book is inconsistent with science!" House argued, "You know how many epileptics were tortured because they were 'possessed'? How many teenage witches were stoned to death because they took mushrooms?"

Suddenly the light went off in Reid's head. "I know what she has!" Amber turned to him, a smile on her face; the others wore looks of incredulity that he had come up with the answer before them. "Mushrooms weren't the only thing that got people stoned to death, jimson weed, belladonna, mandrake root, and moldy bread. It's ergot poisoning."

"You'd need damp grain that had been..." 13 started to argue.

Cole cut in, "...Completely unprocessed and untreated like what's in that organic rye bread she's been eating."

Amber clicked in a missing piece, "It's why she got worse on the bromocriptine, it's an ergot derivative."

"There hasn't been a case in fifty years," Brennan pointed out.

"She kept asking for milk," Amber added, "Dairy products counteract the effects."

The team smiled, surprised that he had gotten the diagnosis, but not all that shocked. Reid himself managed to look a strange combination of pleased at his own brilliance and a little surprised that the others had agreed with his diagnosis, but also a little alarmed, seeing the look Amber was giving him.

******

House entered the lecture theatre, a large bunch of flowers in his hands. "As you know, there are thirteen of you and..." He paused and counted the flowers, dumping several onto the desk when there were too many. "...Only six roses."

"Those are peonies," Kutner pointed out. House threw him a threatening glare and he quickly added, "But I'm sure they're part of the rose family."

"Now, I would love to keep all of you, but not enough to do anything about it," House said, "So, according to my arbitrary schedule, one of you has to go." He looked from one fellow to the other, seeming to revel in watching them squirm.

Finally he settled on Amber. "You're kidding," she said. He continued to look at her, a deadly serious on his face. JJ smiled, thinking that Amber was finally gone and not at all sorry about it. Amber angrily jumped from her seat. "I was right on the last case about something still being wrong, I robbed a grave, I..."

"...Planted a dog collar in the procedure room just to screw with my head," Emily supplied.

Amber turned to House, "No, I never..." He handed her a flower and she instantly clammed up. JJ could barely hide her disappointment.

Emily turned to House and incredulously asked, "What, you don't believe she did it?"

"I'm sure she did," House shrugged, "That's why she's getting the flower, it was beautiful." Amber smiled victoriously. "She just overreached. She got into your head."

"No, I..." Emily started to argue.

House cut her off, "She owned you. Planting the idea was good, letting it fester was good, leaving the collar was stupid. Well known fact, ghosts don't leave things lying around."

"So am I gone then?" she asked, a hint of hopefulness in her voice. The team could tell that she was still struggling and would have been glad of an excuse to leave this assignment because she would never give up under her own duress. House smiled and handed her one of the flowers and she took it gratefully, but once he turned away, she sunk into her seat with a sigh.


	6. Mirror, Mirror

_Whatever houses I may visit, I will come for the benefit of the sick, remaining free of all intentional injustice, of all mischief and in particular of sexual relations with both female and male persons, be they free or slaves._  
_- Hippocratic Oath_

"Today, we are hunting for the cat burglar of diseases, causes a healthy man's lungs to fail, leaves no fingerprints," House announced to the remaining fellows.

"Respiratory distress could be asthma," Cole suggested.

"No hyperinflation on the x-ray."

"Food allergy," Kutner tried, "Could have eaten shellfish or peanuts."

"No hives, no erythema on the skin," House shot down again.

"Pulmonary embolism," 13 tried.

At that point Cuddy and Foreman walked into the lecture theatre. "Embolism's don't magically dissolve," House said to 13. Then, turning to address Foreman, rather brusquely asked, "What are you doing here?"

"Laryngospasm," Foreman supplied a diagnosis, everyone turning to look at him. "Frosty air hits his vocal cords, they spasm shut, choke him out."

"Good idea," House said, "You've been tremendously helpful, you can leave."

"I just hired him," Cuddy told House.

"Well, I just fired him," House retorted, "To infinity."

Foreman turned to Cuddy, "You didn't tell him I was coming back?"

"She did," House said, "I said no." The fellows followed the exchange as if they were watching a tennis match, heads swivelling between combatants.

Cuddy snapped, "When your extended job interview-slash-reality TV show killed a patient, you lost your veto power." Emily became noticeably dejected at the mention of her mistake. Turning to the fellows, Cuddy announced, "Everybody, this is Dr. Foreman, he will..."

Amber cut her off, "Does this mean there's one less slot for us?" At the implication that only two of them might now get a job everyone turned to look at House who looked to Cuddy, waiting for her judgement.

"It's still Dr. House's department, he decides who stays, who goes..."

"Foreman goes!" House quickly proffered.

"But Dr. Foreman will be my eyes and ears. You do nothing without his knowledge," Cuddy informed everyone before turning to leave.

House stopped her, asking, "Oh, just in case I need them, where exactly will Dr. Foreman be keeping my balls?" Foreman and Cuddy both rolled their eyes as she continued to make her exit. Returning his attention to the fellows, House said, "If you want to keep your jobs, _that _never happened." Returning to the patient, he continued, "The only way to get the cat burglar is to catch him in the act. Give the patient a methacholine challenge, see if it sets off a laryngospasm."

"You want us to stop his breathing?" JJ asked incredulously.

"Well, only until you can figure out why... After that it'd be irresponsible."

******

Amber was on her way to inform House of the test results when she spotted JJ and Reid by the nurse's station where Chase was bartering with a small mob in a miniature trading pit. "Test was a bust," she informed them.

"Amber has moved down to even money," Chase announced to the room at large.

"We found two new symptoms," Amber added, ignoring Chase.

"Back to two to one," Chase revised.

"What's going on?" Amber asked, directed more to Reid than JJ.

"You're the favorite," Reid said.

"House's?" Amber asked, pleased.

"To get fired," JJ said smugly.

"You can bet against yourself..." Chase said, "Lovely parting gift..."

"What's the limit?" Amber asked.

"Isn't one."

"Five hundred on Jareau," Amber bet.

JJ glared at Amber with all the hate she could muster. "One Thousand on Amber."

Amber considered for a moment, "Do you take cheques?"

******

This time Foreman stood before the fellows, attempting to negotiate them through a diagnosis. "How do we connect abdominal pain and numbness in the extremities with respiratory distress?"

"Dissecting aortic aneurysm," Brennan suggested.

"Doesn't cover all three. What else?"

House walked into the lecture theatre and everyone turned to look at him. "Carry on, he's the boss," House shrugged as he took a seat between 13 and Kutner.

"What about a spinal cord lesion," Taub offered.

"Have to be in the brain stem and it still doesn't explain the lungs."

"Weird, though... That the's the boss. Didn't he quit recently? Was it a money issue?" House mused aloud.

"Lungs, stomach, numbness?" Foreman pressed.

"No, that wasn't it, it was something else... Was it bling account? Med plan didn't cover tattoo removal?" House continued.

"We have to unify these symptoms," Foreman continued to ignore House's jibes.

"Oh, I remember, you didn't want to turn into me, right? You didn't want to become evil."

Finally, Foreman relented, "Can we stick to the medicine here?"

"Absolutely. I'm just flattered; in a few short weeks, seems like I've just turned towards the light. I mean... either that or you've sold your soul."

"Multiple marantic emboli could..." Foreman brushed past.

"Get a raise? 'Cause then you're a whore. Or didn't you? 'Cause then you're a stupid whore." House's insults were interrupted by his pager going off. "Patient just crashed," he read. Everyone continued to sit there. "Can they go, boss?" House asked Foreman who nodded.

As everyone stood to go attend to the patient, Foreman said, "Oh, Dr. Prentiss, could I speak with you for a minute?" Emily froze in the process of standing up, casting a deer in the headlights look to the team. She slowly made her way to the front of the room, her heart pounding in her throat, feeling like first grader who had just been called to the principal's office. Foreman waited until everyone else had left the room before speaking, "Dr. Cuddy told me about what happened with the patient and his dog..."

Emily sighed, she had a feeling this was coming. She cut him off, "If you're going to give me a lecture, save it, I've already heard it all. If you're gonna fire me, just go ahead and do it..."

Foreman gave a half smile that came off as more of a grimace. He was sure that by now she was sick of the judgement and the fake sympathy and the blame. "No, actually, I wanted to tell you that you should stop blaming yourself."

Her brain ground to a halt, not having expected anything close to that. She stuttered for a moment, not exactly sure how to respond to that.

Foreman continued, "Believe me when I say I know what you're going through." Emily looked up sharply to meet his eyes. "A few months ago we were treating this woman, we diagnosed her with cancer and I wanted to give her full body radiation. She kept getting worse..." He faltered as if reliving the incident were painful. "We found out she actually had an infection and because we killed her immune system, there was nothing we could do for her..."

Emily finished his sentence, "She died..." Foreman nodded, but said nothing, waiting for her to speak. "I should have paid attention, I could have saved him and his dog, none of it had to happen. If I had just..." She faltered, breaking down into sobs. Foreman pulled her into a gentle hug and she cried against his shoulder.

******

"The guy's faking," Kutner insisted, "It's Munchausen's. You notice the EMT run sheet? Paramedic who brought him in is also named Martin Harris."

House scoffed, "Well, if the name was Attila Von Weinerschnitzel, I'd say you might be on to something."

"He's copying his neighbours' symptoms," Foreman said, "Room 406, abdominal pain. Room 403, left-sided numbness. 402, syncope."

House shook his head, "No, Munchausen's patients create symptoms, not names."

"Munchausen's patients have medical histories they don't want us reading," Foreman insisted.

"He was in a lab coat; Munchausen's pretend to be patients, not doctors. He's got mirror syndrome," House said.

"Giovannini's?" Taub asked skeptically.

"Do you know of another mirror syndrome?" he scoffed, "Brain's got no idea who he is, where he is, or what he is. It fills the holes with whatever dirt's lying around. He reads a name tag, he's got a name. Sees a doctor, he's got a job. Sees symptoms, he's got a problem."

"My explanation's simpler," Foreman argued.

"Well, if it's simple, then we discharge the nut bar, but if it's complicated, then the nut bar has got brain damage." House turned to the fellows, clearly ignoring Foreman, "Mirror syndrome patients have no agenda, no axe to grind. They can read you because they have to, moods, attitudes, everything. They're like mind readers, expect they can read your mind."

"I've read that Giovannini's patients mimic whoever they think is in charge..." Reid said.

House grinned, "This is gonna be fun. I need three ways to pinpoint infection."

"Blood cultures," Kutner suggested.

"Blood's clumpy, nothing you can do with it."

"Unless we soak him in warm water before we draw it," Kutner insisted.

"Good, what else?"

"Ultrasound his abdomen, look for an abscess," Taub offered.

"Good, still need one more."

"We need to find out his history," Cole said, "Where he's been, what he's done."

"He has no memory," Brennan argued, "No ID, no wallet, no missing persons report filed for a hundred miles."

"Big Love is right," House said, "History's the key. He had car keys in his pocket when he was admitted. Search the street where he was mugged, find the car and the registration," he ordered Cole.

"There could be thousands of cars!" Cole complained, "Why do I get this assignment?"

"Because if you deal with the patient, he's going to wind up singing Osmond songs and proposing to five nurses at once."

"I'll go with Cole," Emily immediately offered.

******

"Heating blanket wasn't keeping him warm enough. Ordered a whirlpool, got his blood flowing; so far, it's keeping his rash at bay," Kutner narrated.

"Rash worse equals cold agglutinins worse, means what was in his liver wasn't fungus," House said.

"Yeah, labs confirmed that it wasn't even pus, just coagulated blood caused by the cold agglutinins," Rossi read off the lab printout.

"Broad spectrum antibiotics aren't working, it's got to be viral or exotic bacteria," Foreman said.

"There are a thousand microbes it could be," Taub complained.

"We could repeat all the cultures, maybe we just missed it," JJ shrugged.

"Or we could get an accurate history," House said as he dialled his phone.

Emily answered the phone with a terse, "We're working on it." She and Cole stood on the outside of the fence surrounding an impound lot, two large Dobermans stared them down from the other side of the chain-link, teeth bared in a vicious snarl. While she talked, Cole hid several pills in a clump of meat.

"That'll be a good solace to the widow X," House replied.

"His car was towed and the tow gate's locked," she explained, "The guys must be out on a run."

"That's why I sent two of you," House said slightly exasperatedly, "One of you breaks in, the other posts bail."

"Getting arrested is not what I'm worried about..." Emily said as the dogs barked and leapt at the fence, trying to reach them.

"Not a problem," House retorted nonchalantly, "You know how to kill dogs, right?" With that, he hung up, leaving Emily staring at the phone with a shocked expression.

Foreman glared at him as he replaced the receiver in the cradle. "That was cruel, even for you," he scolded, "You didn't have to do that."

House shrugged, "What do you care? I'm cruel all the time, to the other fellows, to patients, to Cuddy, to you... Why does this time stand out?"

"She feels terrible about what happened, she still blames herself. She wanted to quit because she was afraid it would happen again, she cried..."

House cut him off, "You love her..."

Foreman huffed and snapped, "Could you save ridiculing my personal life until the patient is cured?"

******

"Did you know there's a pool betting on which of the fellows if going to get fired?" Reid mentioned nonchalantly to the others as they ate lunch.

"Really?" Rossi asked, intrigued, "What are the odds on all of us?"

"I don't know," he shrugged, "Go ask Chase."

"Who's the favorite?" Morgan asked.

"Last time I checked, it was Amber," Reid said.

JJ smiled and muttered under her breath, "Good, I hope she does leave."

Reid laughed, "Because you bet a thousand dollars on her getting fired." The others joined in the laughter.

"What do you have such a grudge against her anyways?" Rossi asked.

"I don't have a _grudge_..." she said sheepishly, "Everybody hates her." Some of them accepted the answer, it was true that Amber wasn't well liked, but Morgan continued to eye her suspiciously.

Waiting until Reid, Hotch, and Rossi left the doctor's lounge, Morgan finally spoke up, "Okay, spill."

"What?"

"What's the real reason you hate Amber so much?"

"I don't know what you're talking about..."

"It's because she's been flirting with Reid, isn't it?"

JJ sighed exasperatedly, "She only likes him because he's smart, because she thinks if she can get him on her side then she can use him to get hired. She's a black widow, she just wants to use him for her own twisted purposes and then once she gets what she wants she'll just spit him back out. She doesn't care about him at all!"

"But you do..." he finished quietly.

She gave him a _'don't go there...' _look and whispered dangerously, "This _never _leaves this room."

"But..."

"Don't start what you can't finish..." she hissed before walking out the door. Morgan was left standing there, confused.

******

"His name's Robert Elliot," Emily told House as he walked back into his office, "He's from Hamilton, Ohio."

"Here's everything he had in his trunk and in his glove box," Cole said, handing him a box of old receipts and a half full tube of vapour rub."

House examined the contents before saying, "No need for the heart biopsy, I now know exactly who he is and what he has. You saved his life."

"Really?" Cole asked.

"No, you idiot, it's vapour rub and lunch receipts."

"We have his name, we can find his doctor, get his medical records," Emily said.

House shook his head, "It's 8:00 at night, the biopsy will still be faster. Not fast enough to save him, but that's hardly the point." Emily and Cole both turned to leave, defeated, but House stopped Emily before she could leave, "Prentiss." Both turned to look at him and House snapped at Cole, "Is your name Prentiss?" He continued on his way out. Once he was gone, House asked, "Why did you volunteer to go street walking?"

"I thought I could help that way," she shrugged.

"A black Mormon could help that way, there's no reason for you to want to be there. Which means there's a reason you didn't want to be here. Didn't want to look in the mirror?" He shepherded her towards the patients room and pushed her inside. She snapped on a pair of rubber gloves. "Talk to him," House instructed.

"Um... You might feel a little tug when the catheter's in the heart."

"Come on, make him feel comfortable."

"I've done this procedure dozens of time," she lied, "It's completely..."

The patient cut her off, "My God, you are incredibly hot."

House sighed, frustrated that the patient was mirroring him, "I'm not here, deal with her."

"Are you an idiot? Do you not think she's hot?" the patient embellished.

"I'm not the alpha here, she is. She's my boss," House lied, trying to make himself seem less powerful so he'd mimic Emily.

"The rash is back," Emily noted.

"Increase the drip," House instructed, quickly revising, "If you think that's the right thing to do."

"This is so frustrating," the patient sighed.

"I don't think that's me," Emily said. House left the room and, through the glass doors, Emily could see him talking to Kutner, no doubt trying to get him to come and spy on her so he could report what the patient mirrored of her.

Luckily, using the catheter to take a sample of heart tissue was one of the procedures they had been taught to perform so Emily managed relatively well without help. "Got it. Pink, good size, nice specimen," she narrated.

"I'm scared," the patient said quietly.

"It's okay, it's going to be okay," she comforted awkwardly.

"No, no, it's not," he said. That's when she remembered that he was reading that fear from her.

House was still arguing with Kutner when she left the room and walked over to them. "Nothing on the biopsy," she told them.

"And how is he?" House asked, obviously not referring to the patient.

"His fever's at 106..."

He cut her off, "I know, but how is he? Bitter? Sexually frustrated?"

"He's delightful," Emily retorted, "Loves the smell of freshly baked rhubarb pie and isn't afraid to love. Also, his rash is back."

******

House stood before the fellows, lecturing them, while what seemed to be the entire hospital looked on from the back of the room. "You all suck," House told the fellows, indicating Cole and Emily, he continued, "The two of you took fourteen hours to find a car." He pointed to Kutner, "You forgot to mention that the guy with no memory had memories." Brennan, "You keep on thinking that insane guys have hidden wisdom, you're going to wind up shooting people on the subway." He looked over the rest of them and finished lamely, "Something..."

"So, which one of us sucks the most?" Taub asked, almost afraid to hear the answer.

"It's a tie."

"Between?" Amber urged.

"All of you."

"We're all fired?" Amber asked. dismayed.

"None of you are fired." Everyone let out a sigh of relief and there was a large groan of disappointment from the back of the room where people started handing money to a celebrating Chase.

******

Once again, as the last of the fellows filed out of the lecture theatre, Foreman cornered Emily. She looked up to see him standing nearby and she gave a start. "Sorry, you startled me."

"Sorry," he smiled slightly, "I just wanted to apologize for House, his earlier comments were uncalled for..."

She smiled, "Don't worry about it, I'm used to it."

"How are you doing?" he asked quietly, they both knew what he was referring to.

She shrugged, "Been better... How did you deal with it?"

"Sometimes, I need to think there's something out there paying attention. So, when I can't talk to anybody, I talk to God and pretend somebody's listening."

She grimaced, "I think I've given up on getting any sympathy from God..."

"Well," he said quietly, "You could always talk to me..." She felt an involuntary shiver run the length of her spine. Without a cognitive thought as to why, she slowly leaned in towards him until her lips brushed against his. He very gently returned the gesture, pulling her closer with a hand on her cheek.

Neither heard the creak of the heavy door on its hinges as it opened to admit Morgan. He stood there for a moment, rooted to the floor, an expression of disbelief on his face when he saw Emily and Foreman kissing. After the momentary shock passed, he seemed to regain himself, choking out a breath that had caught in his throat.

Just as quietly, he left the room. Once out the door, he turned on his heel and headed for the door, leaving JJ and Reid in his wake, shocked and confused at the unexplained 180 degree turn in his mood. He had been his standard cheerful, playful self when he went into the lecture theatre to ask Emily if she planned on joining them that day...

A/N: And now you see (hopefully) why it had to be Emily that killed the dog... And as I'm sure you can also see, I'm building up to some great conflict...


	7. Whatever It Takes

_I will neither give a deadly drug to anybody who asked for it, nor will I make a suggestion to this effect.  
- Hippocratic Oath_

*****

A different morning than usual, the fellows were attempting to find a case that House would be interested in treating. "Sixty-eight year old male, non-smoker..." 13 started to suggest.

House, clearly uninterested, stopped her, "Sixty-eight's a good run. That'll leave something in the lockbox for the rest of us. Next!"

"Twenty month old baby, persistent rash, fever..." Amber tried.

"Too much crying."

"Female college student with..." Hotch began.

"Too much drama."

Foreman sighed, "You don't care about the crying or the drama because you won't see the patient. And you'd treat Methuselah if his snot had an interesting color. It means you've already decided which case you wanna take next."

"Tell me about Speed Racer," he said.

Brennan flipped through his file, reading off, "Female, seizure with visual and auditory processing deficiency. I did a consult and..."

House cut him off, "What kind of race car?"

"Dragster," Brennan replied.

That seemed to increase House's interest. "Continue."

"You're gonna take a case based on the car she drives?" Cole asked incredulously.

House smiled, "Nothing says 'thanks for saving my life' like a test drive in a car that accelerates faster than a space shuttle."

"You can't save her life because she's not dying," Foreman reminded, "Her lab shows signs of dehydration, means the problem is just likely heatstroke."

"Kinda hard to get heat-struck in four and a half seconds," House argued.

"Not when you're wearing a three layer fireproof suit," Rossi pointed out.

There was a cautious creaking as the door at the back of the room was pushed open to admit a man wearing a black suit. "Excuse me," he said, his voice deep and gravelly. Everyone turned to look at the intruder. "Dr. House?" he asked as he neared the front of the room. Everyone turned to look at House, apprehension thick on the air.

House shrugged, "No, lazy ass called in sick again. We can give him a message."

The man pulled out a picture of House, looked at it for a second before looking back up at House, triumphant. "May we talk in private?"

House considered for a moment, the fellows wondering what kind of trouble he could possibly be in this time, not that any of them seemed surprised. As House stood to follow the man out of the room he said, "So, either it's heatstroke, in which case we take the afternoon off or it's one of the diagnoses that you guys are gonna have for me in two minutes."

As House left the room, Foreman prepared to take over the diagnostic session while the fellows seemed more interested in the suit-clad stranger. "Cop?" Taub wondered aloud.

"He's not packing," JJ pointed out.

"Your dad's wither a cop or a security guard," Amber assumed.

"Or she carries a weapon," Kutner added. JJ only smiled mysteriously.

"How about we concentrate on our possibly dying patient," Foreman snapped.

After a few minutes of theorizing, House reentered the room, the man in the suit not far behind. "Okay, what do you got?"

"Hereditary brain disorder, transient ischemia, or paraneoplastic syndrome," Brennan listed, "None of those go away with IV fluids, it's heatstroke."

"Or Cushing's or calcium deficiency," House said.

"Who's your friend?" Kutner couldn't resist asking.

House, of course, couldn't resist a joke, "We use the term 'life partner'." The man didn't seem to take kindly to that. House pulled on his coat, preparing to leave, and instructed the fellows, "Get a fresh history, neurological exam, and and MRI of her head."

They all exchanged a look as House followed the stranger out of the room. The team's consensus was that, whoever he was, he certainly looked official. Hotch and Reid surreptitiously slipped out the back of the room after House, eventually cornering them in the stairwell. They caught the tailend of a conversation, House saying, "Little advice, I mean, obviously the Village People played out the whole cop thing. But come on, CIA? Do you seriously expect anyone to believe that?"

"Dr. House?" Reid called, playing his role as a diversion while Hotch spoke to the stranger. He began a spiel of questions related to the patient, arguing that she might have some outrageous illness not among those they had previously postulated.

Hotch turned to the stranger and pulled out his badge, "SSA Aaron Hotchner, FBI."

The stranger eyed him suspiciously, seeing as he was wearing a lab coat, but eventually pulled his own badge from a pocket, "Agent Smith, CIA."

"What is your interest with Dr. House?" Hotch quizzed.

"One of our employees just returned from an assignment sick, we believe that he may be the victim of an assassination attempt. We need Dr. House's expertise to diagnose what he is afflicted with," Agent Smith explained.

"We've been charged with protecting Dr. House from a possible attempt on his life..." Hotch started to warn.

"Don't worry, he'll be at CIA Headquarters, under constant supervision. No one will know he's there, no one will be able to get near him," Smith reassured.

Hotch, moderately placated, ordered, "Anything happens, we need to know, you contact Penelope Garcia at Quantico."

Smith gave a terse nod and continued towards the roof. "Dr. House, we need to hurry."

House brushed past Reid and limped behind Agent Smith. "Yeah, we need to hurry." Clearly, he was still skeptical that they were actually headed to the CIA.

******

"The CIA needs his help in diagnosing a possible assassination attempt," Hotch informed the others while they worked in the lab.

Rossi gave a pithy laugh, "What are the chances it happens while we're on the case?"

"So, what happens if someone attacks him while he's consulting?" Morgan asked, "Shouldn't one of us be going with him?"

"You don't think the CIA is capable of protecting him?" Hotch asked.

"He's going to a hospital not an armory..." Morgan reminded.

Just then, Foreman walked past the lab and Emily stood. "Excuse me, I need to speak with Er – I mean, Dr. Foreman."

Morgan glared as, through the glass wall, he watched Emily approach Foreman who smiled warmly and placed a hand on her upper arm. JJ followed his gaze and turning back, quietly asked, "Does that have something to do with your sudden bad mood yesterday?"

"She kissed him..." he said distantly.

"Yeah, right," JJ scoffed, "Emily Prentiss jeopardize a case by getting personally involved with a superior?" She shook her head, "Doesn't sound like something she'd do..."

"Fine," Morgan snapped, "Don't believe me, but I'm telling the truth." He looked up again, just in time to see Foreman take Emily's hand in his. He dropped it again just as quickly as Amber turned the corner, heading straight for him. "Hey Reid, don't look now, but here comes Amber..." Morgan jibed. His demeanor brightened slightly as Reid looked about anxiously, giving a small yelp of alarm, while JJ scowled.

******

At the front of the lecture theatre, Foreman scrawled on the whiteboard a list of the patient's symptoms. "Fever and delirium rule out Miller-Fisher," he narrated, negating their earlier theory, "MS fits better."

"Progression's too fast," Cole argued, "More likely meningitis."

"Areflexia doesn't fit as well with..." Foreman started to say.

"Does with amyloidosis," 13 interrupted.

"That's even slower than MS," Taub said, "It's lupus."

"I'm with the little man on this one," Amber agreed with Taub, "It's attacking the body and the brain, classic autoimmune."

"Lupus this aggressive wouldn't spare her kidneys," Foreman said, "It's primarily neurological. Let's start on her..."

Once again he was cut off, this time by Brennan, "Why no plaques on her MRI?"

"MRI was inconclusive," Reid pointed out.

Brennan ignored him, speaking to Foreman, "So, now you're sure that it's MS, just like you were sure it was Miller-Fisher an hour after you were sure it was heatstroke?"

"The symptoms fit, start her on interferon," Foreman ordered.

That didn't seem to fit well with most of the fellows. "We're not gonna score any points with House if we solve this just by running your errands," Kutner said.

"I get that you want to be right," Foreman sighed.

"You don't?" Cole asked skeptically.

"I'm just trying to save a patient, not score points with my boss."

"Would it hurt the patient if you let us run some tests?" Emily asked gently, giving Foreman a pleading look, knowing that the impending feud could easily be prevented.

Foreman looked up at her and softened. "You've got three hours."

******

Foreman paced at the front of the room, glaring at Amber and Taub, an overwhelming silence filling the room. Kutner was the first to dare break it, "Paralysis," he cited the latest symptom, "It's a new symptom? Big white space on the board where it would fit? Nice, multicolored markers?" he prompted, making exaggerated writing motions in the air.

"I'm not writing it because we can't know if it's a real symptom," Foreman said angrily. Indicating Amber and Taub, he continued, "When these two went rogue and pumped her full of steroids..."

Taub cut him off, "Steroids don't cause paralysis."

"She was also on interferon. Giving her both probably fried her immune system," Foreman pointed out, "Who knows what infection you could cause..."

"Yes, they've ignored you, they screwed up," 13 interjected, "And it's fun watching you spank them, but can we get back to the medicine?"

"The last thing any of you give a damn about is the medicine!" Foreman shouted. Most of the fellows at least had the sense to look apologetic. Emily felt the guilt over her mistake once again well up inside and when Foreman looked out at the fellows, he noticed the tears sparkling in her eyes. He sat down and took a deep, calming breath before saying, "Look, I'm not saying you're bad doctors or bad people, but House is. He created a nasty little cut-throat world, planted you in it, and is watching you play. And none of it works for anyone except him."

"And whoever wins," Amber cut in. Foreman glared at her.

Everyone seemed to regain their senses. "It's progressing very quickly," Hotch noted, remembering an early case the team had worked on, "We should assume botulism."

"I'll go to her place, check out her fridge and pantry," Kutner seemed to agree with his idea.

From a segregated corner, Brennan suddenly stood and announced, "It's not botulism, it's polio." The room went dead silent as the other fellows tried to decide if he was being serious or not.

"Brilliant," Taub said sarcastically, "We should search her home for FDR's remains or a time machine."

"She could have contracted it from anyone who's been to Africa or..." Brennan started to justify.

"She's been vaccinated," JJ pointed out.

"Vaccines wear off."

"There hasn't been a single American case in over twenty years," 13 said skeptically.

"I've seen this disease," Brennan continued to argue, "I know what it looks like."

"That's why you're finding it," Foreman said, "Because you're looking for it. Polio, it's – it's crazy."

"House wouldn't think so..."

"So go find House and tell him your theory," Foreman snapped, "Take a personal day. Seriously, get out of here."

"You don't have the power to fire me!" Brennan implored.

"But I do have the power to kick your ass off my case." He addressed the others, "We're starting the botulism treatment, look for confirmation."

******

"I can't believe that they would directly disobey my order and treat her for lupus," Foreman vented, "Or that Cameron would tell them to do that."

"Maybe you should ask for Dr. Cameron's version of that story. I'd bet anything that something's been distorted in the telling of that story... Because Amber would never lie..." Emily said sarcastically.

He smiled, but quickly got annoyed again. "And polio? That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. This isn't 1910..."

Emily reached out to take his hand, running her thumb softly across the back of his hand. "Who was it that told me that sometimes you just have to let some things go?"

He sighed, "You're right. C'est la vie..." He smiled and gently leaned down to capture her lips with his.

******

"She's getting worse," the patient's father told Foreman.

Foreman nodded, "Fever's risen slightly." There was a knock on the glass wall, causing Foreman and Hotch, who was assisting him, to look up. Brennan stood on the other side, gesturing for them to come outside. They both ignored him.

The father spoke up again, slightly unsure, "But it's definitely botulism, right?" He started to get angry, "Because if you're wrong again and you're treating her for something she doesn't even have..."

"The antitoxin hasn't had time to work yet," Hotch comforted, understanding the father's pain, "I know it's hard, but try to be patient."

Brennan knocked again, obviously having something urgent to say. "Excuse us," Foreman said to the father.

Once they were outside, Brennan seemed to lose some of his bravado. "I know you're pissed I interrupted, but you're gonna be even more pissed in a second..."

He handed over a sheet of paper which Foreman studied incredulously. "You tested her without telling me?" he asked angrily. Foreman handed the sheet of paper to Hotch who blindly attempted to understand.

"Yeah. And I know, I'm really, really sorry. But... on the other hand, it's positive..." Hotch looked up surprised, Foreman snatched the paper back. "She has polio. Now what, boss?"

******

Foreman sat before the fellows, his head bowed. "I'm sorry," he apologized, "I was stubborn and arrogant."

"Self-recriminations won't help her," Brennan said, a hint of triumph on his voice.

"Nothing's gonna help her," Rossi said, "She's got _polio_."

"There's no cure, but there are treatments," Amber said.

"She's dying," Foreman sighed, resigned. Emily felt sorry for him, knowing that he would blame himself.

"Yeah, every death's a tragedy," Taub snapped, "Funny how you weren't so depressed when she was just dying because me and Amber screwed up."

"And I'm also self-centered," Foreman said, "Thanks for clarifying."

Kutner couldn't resist adding his two cents, "Don't forget self-pitying."

Emily stood up for him, "Who isn't? He was only doing what he thought was best for the patient and we can hardly say as much, so we're in no place to hand down judgment. Instead of making him feel bad, which he clearly already does, why don't we try coming up with an alternative diagnosis." Foreman smiled his gratitude for her words while Morgan glared daggers at Foreman.

"Vitamin C, extremely high doses," Brennan said suddenly.

"What?"

"It was experimental treatment protocol in the fifties," he elaborated.

"And they haven't finished yet?" Kutner asked jokingly.

"They lost funding," Brennan admitted.

"That's because there's no logical reason vitamin C would cure polio," Foreman scoffed.

"Well, someone thought there was..."

"Someone thought black people made excellent farm implements," Foreman countered.

"I'm not talking about hurting anyone, I just wanna force-feed her some orange juice."

"You wanna throw in some bacon and eggs as well?" he snapped.

Brennan narrowed his eyes, "If there's anything you learn today, it's gotta be that you can be wrong..." Foreman sighed and nodded relentingly.

******

"Polio being cured by vitamin C, really?" Rossi muttered, gesturing with his fork while he ate, "That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard."

"You know, it's not actually that outrageous. There's a lot of medical evidence to back him up," Reid said.

"Don't tell me you actually believe him?" Rossi asked.

Not directly answering the question, he instead rattled off a list of facts, "In 1949, Dr. Frederick Klenner described his successful treatment of polio using ascorbic acid. He used extremely high doses, up to 300 000 milligrams per day and it is actually much safer than any other conventional treatment since it literally has no side effects. He not only proved it effective against polio, but also with a multitude of other conditions, including chicken pox, measles, mumps, hepatitis, rocky mountain spotted fever, arthritis, and some cancers. He believes that the reason it works is due to the fact that the human enzymes that are responsible for manufacturing vitamin C are massively inefficient and inadequate to meet our requirements, essentially saying that humans have a life-long deficiency of vitamin C and many conditions result from that. It's like being anemic because of an iron deficiency, we need a supplement to maintain good health. In fact, several other physicians agree with him and have dubbed the deficiency 'hypoascorbemia'."

Amber had come up behind them while he spoke, startling them both when she suddenly commented, "That's really interesting, I wasn't aware of any of that. Why don't I join you and you can tell me more about the research."

Rossi stood up as he swallowed his last bite, "Here, why don't you take my seat, I have clinic hours to do." Reid attempted to covertly gesture to Rossi not to leave him alone with her, but he either didn't understand his signals or ignored them.

Amber smiled as she sat down, "So, Dr. Reid, what's your opinion about the use of vitamin C as a treatment?"

******

"What do you see in him anyway?" Morgan finally burst out as he helped Emily change the patient's IV and check her vitals.

"I don't know what you're talking about," she replied frostily.

"Yes, you do," he retorted, "Dr. Self-righteous..."

"_Dr. Foreman _is an excellent doctor and I was merely consulting him about the patient, something that doctors do," she hissed, "And don't you think it's rather tacky to be having this conversation while we're treating the patient?"

He huffed, but said nothing more until they left the room. When the door slid shut, he picked right up, "I saw you kissing," he accused.

"Fine, we kissed!" she wheeled on him, "What do you care?"

"I don't care!" he snapped, "I want to make sure it won't interfere with the case."

"It won't!" she said, the words catching in her throat.

"What do you see in him?" he repeated.

"He understands what it's like to have everyone blame you, to mistrust you, to talk behind your back because you made a mistake and someone died. He knows what that's like. And since we're on the subject, he cares, you obviously don't! So if you'll excuse me..." She pushed past him, leaving him standing stunned in her wake.

******

The fellows were half asleep in their seats, despite the coffee cups in their hands, when House walked into the room with a ridiculously bright greeting for the early hour.

"Where have you been for the last two days?" Taub asked.

"Overslept," House shrugged.

"We saved Speed Racer," Brennan announced, obviously pleased with himself.

"She had polio, we cured it with vitamin C," Kutner elaborated.

House was obviously skeptical, "Yeah and I cured depression with tonic water once," he scoffed, "Actually, I think there was some gin in it too."

"Hundred and fifty grams over six hours," Taub said, "It worked."

Foreman entered the room, a sheet of test results in his hands, and announced, "No, it didn't." Everyone turned to look at him. "I told you you can't cure polio. That means either she's not cured or she never had it. Since she's walking out of here..." He handed the paper to House and explained, "I tested her blood from admittance, no polio. That means Brennan screwed up the lab tests."

"Or _you _screwed up _your_ lab tests," Brennan argued.

Amber accused Foreman, "You must have. She got better."

"So it's relapsing and remitting," Foreman suggested, "Maybe porphyria."

House shook his head. "That's a stretch. If she had porphyria you would have seen purple urine."

"You think it's more likely he cured polio?" Hotch asked skeptically.

"They believe it," House gestured towards the other fellows, "Her symptoms fit perfectly and the alternative is unbelievably convoluted. Some doctor would have to poison her with thallium so it looks like polio, then fake a lab test, then give her vitamin C and stop the poison so she magically gets better." He made a face of fake realization. "Actually..." he turned to Brennan, "It is kinda doable, right?" Everyone turned to look at Brennan with shock, he merely stared back at them, nonplussed. "So, what do you think? Should we test her for thallium before you contact Stockholm?"

"You poisoned her?" 13 asked astonished. While everyone else couldn't seem to believe that a fellow doctor would commit such a crime, the team was unsurprised; compared to some of the crimes they had known doctors to commit, this one hardly even registered, not that they were expecting one to happen while they were undercover as doctors.

"The really shocking thing is that Foreman was right about the heatstroke," House remarked.

"Vitamin C cures polio," Brennan said persistently, "I've seen it!"

"Yeah, in some bush clinic. You needed polio in a place with a proper lab; the only problem is that places with proper labs don't have polio," House said.

Brennan stood and advanced on House, "There is no money in finding cures for diseases that only kill poor people. This will make them do research!" Everyone remained too stunned to respond. "And what do you care if I faked a lab test if it saves a few thousand lives? I did what I had to do, isn't that what you hired us for?" He shot House a pleading look.

House nodded and sighed. "Which is why I'm not gonna fire you." The team turned to look at him incredulously, unable to believe that he would continue to let this man work for him even after admitting to poisoning a patient. Brennan gave a sigh of relief. House continued, "You're gonna quit." He merely stood there, giving House an inscrutable look. "Go on, get out of here." Brennan nodded and left; no one missed the glare that he shot about the room. Ordinarily, the team would have arrested him, but seeing as they couldn't do that without blowing their cover, they had no choice but to let him walk away.

"So, you're just gonna let him go?" Foreman asked skeptically.

"Absolutely. I'm gonna let him get as far away as possible before you call the cops. Guy's a nut job." Turning to the fellows, he asked, "Who the hell did I leave in charge?"

"Foreman," Taub said, not hesitating to throw him under the bus, fully expecting some kind of reprimand from House to follow.

"There was a reason for that. Next time, listen to him." Foreman smiled, the pseudo-praise from House unexpected.


	8. You Don't Want to Know

_Most especially must I tread with care in matters of life and death. If it is given me to save a life, all thanks. But it may also be within my power to take a life; this awesome responsibility must be faced with great humbleness and awareness of my own frailty. Above all, I must not play at God._  
_- Hippocratic Oath_

*****

"So, who might have a grudge against House?" Hotch started the ball rolling as they discussed the profile in the midst of the deserted cafeteria.

"Wouldn't it just be easier to list who wouldn't have a grudge against him?" Rossi said, but started listing anyway, "Any of his patients or their families, other doctors or any hospital staff really, former fellows, people he went to med school with, his boss, donors to the hospital..."

"We know it's not Dr. Cuddy or Dr. Wilson," JJ noted.

"Or Dr. Foreman," Emily added.

"We don't know that," Morgan argued, "He has a grudge against House, he doesn't like being under his authority, he thinks that House is 'evil'..."

"It's not him," Emily insisted, adding under her breath so only he could hear, "Would you just let it go?"

"I also highly doubt that it was Dr. Cameron," Reid said. There was mutual agreement, Cameron was hardly the type to make death threats.

"What about the guy that shot him two years ago?" Rossi asked.

"Nope, still in jail," Hotch said.

"I remember reading something about House being arrested for several drug-related charges, some of which went to trial... But he got off on all of them, claimed the officer was out to get him," Morgan suggested.

"It's possible, I'll have Garcia check him out."

Cuddy joined them at the table, looking around to make sure there was no one in the immediate vicinity. "Have you considered Edward Vogler or Stacy Warner?" Hotch shook his head and she elaborated, "Vogler donated a large sum of money to the hospital, but it came with strings attached. Long story short, House made a fool of him at a drug endorsement and Vogler then pressed the board to fire him. Stacy is House's ex-girlfriend, she almost wrecked her marriage for him, but he turned her down."

That seemed to be pertinent. Hotch nodded and told her, "We'll look into them. Can you think of anyone else? Anyone who House may have been particularly... gruff with?"

Cuddy considered, then shrugged, "House is... House. I know that's not helpful, but it would take weeks to go through the list of people House has managed to piss off..."

As she walked away, Reid said, "I don't think it was the ex-girlfriend, this seems more likely to have been a male, someone House made feel emasculated."

"This seems like someone who's overcompensating," Emily said, looking up from the sheaf of threatening letters in her hands, "Someone who was subordinate to House and was resentful of it."

******

When they were called to gather in the lecture theater later that morning, they were once again expecting a dying patient to be waiting for them. However, that was not the be the case. Instead, House was riding a scooter back and forth across the front of the room. Skidding to a stop, he stepped off the scooter and looked out at the fellows. "Eleven eager doctors and no sick people," he said, "Let's try and fill our spare time with a new challenge. The winner gets immunity..."

Cameron interrupted, coming into the room and tossing a file to House. "Patient's been averaging eighteen hours of sleep..." she started to explain.

House cut her off, "Clinical depression."

"What's the challenge?" Amber cut in.

"It's not clinical depression," Cameron said before continuing, "Three ER doctors, two neurologists, and a radiologist can't figure out what's wrong. She's got a fever, blood work showed signs of inflammation, and..."

"You were talking about a challenge?" Amber repeated.

"The winner nominates two of your competitors, I will fire one of them," House explained.

"Are you going to take the case or not?" Cameron asked, getting annoyed.

"Sure, why not," House shrugged, "This challenge could use a good subplot." Cameron rolled her eyes, but seemed satisfied that she had gotten what she wanted.

House tossed the file to 13 who read it over before saying, "Hypersomnia and personality changes point to a neurological disorder. No other systemic signs of inflammation, probably not vasculitis."

"What about parasites?" Kutner asked, "Malaria, Chagas?"

"Patient's never been outside the US, especially the tropics," Cameron refuted.

"You mean she _claims _she's never been outside the US," Taub said.

"Doesn't matter," 13 said, "Blood and c-sub smears show no signs of parasites."

"Has to be a tumor then," Reid said.

"A tumor sitting directly on top of the brain stem that three ER doctors, two neurologists, and a radiologist missed?" Foreman asked skeptically.

"Partridge in a pear tree missed it too," House said, "You, you, and you," he ordered, indicating Rossi, Hotch, and Morgan, "Redo the blood work and get an MRI with two millimeter cuts."

"What's the challenge?" Amber pressed.

House began his obviously prepared speech, "We can all applaud the doctor who's willing to break all the rules, but the real hero is the unsung doctor toiling away in anonymity because he broke the rules without getting caught. I need to know you have these skills. I need you..." he took a long, dramatic pause, "...to bring me the thong of Lisa Cuddy." There was astounded silence as the fellows all stared at House incredulously; Reid seemed especially uncomfortable, turning a remarkable shade of red that would make a tomato jealous. "Not kidding." Still they remained frozen in their seats. "Thong, Cuddy. Go."

Slowly they started to file out of the auditorium, stopping as they passed Foreman, giving him beseeching looks. He merely shrugged, "It's how I got hired."

As they left the room, Amber strode purposefully towards the clinic, the others a ways behind, clearly unsure. JJ sprinted to catch up to Amber, "You're actually considering this?" she hissed.

"If you want to stand on principle, I really respect you for that," Amber said.

"It's childish, unprofessional, and inappropriate," Cole said, "The job is not worth it."

"We should all beg off," Taub said, "Tell him we failed, no winners, no losers."

"Fine," Amber shrugged. No one believed her for even a second.

"You're going to do it, aren't you?" Reid asked.

"Of course I'm going to do it."

******

"Morgan, you run the blood tests, Rossi and I will do the MRI," Hotch said as he, Morgan, and Rossi made their way to the patient's room.

"What about patients that died while under his care?" Morgan asked suddenly.

"What?" Rossi asked, confused by the rather out of the blue change in conversation.

"The unsub," Morgan elaborated, "It could be a family member of someone who died under House's care. Someone who blamed him for the death." Hotch nodded.

"How long has House been practicing?" Rossi asked skeptically, "That list could be hundreds of names long."

Again, Hotch nodded. "Have Garcia start with deaths in the last five years and go back from there if there isn't anyone fitting the profile."

"We should also look at anyone who's ever sued him for negligence or malpractice," Morgan added. They were about to enter the patient's room when Morgan stopped and looked about. "Where's Rossi?"

Hotch also stopped and looked around, seeing that Rossi was no longer with them. "He was with us just a minute ago..."

"Over there," Morgan pointed out, noticing Rossi attempting to hide at the nurse's station. They both went over to him and gave him questioning looks. "What's going on, man?"

"I can't go in there," he said, gesturing towards the patient's room.

"Why?" Hotch asked, "You've never had a problem before..."

"That's my ex-wife..." he hissed, "If she sees me, she'll recognize me, and our cover will be blown."

Morgan tried not to laugh, but failed. "This is gonna be fun..."

******

Morgan joined Hotch and Rossi in the MRI control room. "Blood work revealed nothing. Garcia's looking into lawsuits and dead patients." He paused for a moment, the humming of the magnet filling the silence. "So..." he eventually spoke, "How are you gonna go through the case without the patient seeing you?"

"There are ten other doctors at House's disposal," Rossi said, "It won't be a problem."

"What if House orders you to do a test while he supervises?"

He thought for a moment, not having considered that possibility. "I don't know... I'll burn that bridge when I come to it."

While he spoke, Hotch noticed the images on the screen starting to become distorted. Clicking on the microphone connecting to the testing room, he said, "Could you lie still please. The less distortion there is, the clearer the picture will be."

Some of the background conversation must have carried across because after a moment she said, "I thought I recognized a voice..."

Rossi covered his face with his hands. There was a muffled lament of, "This is _not _happening!" He looked up and told the others, "Tell her you're stimulating the auditory processing centre of her brain, it was an auditory hallucination."

"You want us to lie to her?" Morgan asked, thoroughly enjoying his predicament.

"Well, I certainly don't want you to tell her the truth..."

******

Morgan, Hotch, and Rossi came into House's office just as Taub handed over a pair of underwear claiming they belong to Cuddy. Just as quickly, House determined them not to be hers. "You don't think that I..." Taub began.

House cut him off, "No. Also, she's wearing a red bra today." Everyone shot him a look. "Like I'm the only one who noticed. Means the downstairs will match."

Hotch cleared his throat to interrupt, "We have the films from the MRI..."

House acted as if he hadn't heard. Turning to Amber, he demanded, "Hike up your skirt."

"Wow," Amber gave a pithy laugh, "That's rude, even for you."

"Hike it down then," House said, rolling his eyes, "You're wearing a black bra; let's see the underwear."

"No!"

"You two cut a deal," House said, indicating Amber and Taub.

Amber looked flustered and grabbed her underwear off the table. "If you're not cheating, you're not trying hard enough."

"The scans..." Hotch repeated, brandishing the envelope containing the images.

House snatched them from his hand and held the films up to the light to examine them. He discarded them onto the table and Foreman snatched them up to examine them for himself. "MRI reveals nothing, it's not a tumor," House said. The fellows followed him down the hall as he headed towards the cafeteria, expecting to diagnose in transit.

They had already travelled several feet before Foreman came sprinting after them with his opinion. "A small glioma could hide from contrast, we should do a PET scan."

"Yes, that's how a responsible doctor would waste his time in this situation," House said, "A glioma not presenting on a contrast MRI would have to be smaller than grain of sand, which does not a gravely ill person make."

"It could just be a postictal disorientation," Reid suggested.

"We would have seen improvement by now," Foreman said.

At that point they emerged in the cafeteria and House headed straight to a table at the centre of the room where Wilson was sitting. "Hey Wilson," he greeted. Standing up on a chair, he announced, "Ladies and gentlemen, I have a regrettable announcement. The kitchen has just learned that our annual shipment of mayonnaise was improperly stored, so anybody who ate... Well, the food should head across the lobby to the clinic right away. Ask for Dr. Cuddy." As people flooded out of the cafeteria, the fellows stared at him in disbelief. "Seizures, fever, elevated SED rate, hypersomnia, personality changes. Go," he said, turning to the fellows.

When they all continued to look at him blankly, Wilson asked, "Did you look at her breasts?"

Now everyone turned to stare at him incredulously. House made a dismissive noise and scoffed, "Men..."

"Could be paraneoplastic," Wilson explained, "Does she have a family history of breast cancer?"

"Her mother died of it," Rossi said.

"Cool," House said, "Go test for it."

Wilson waited until the fellows were gone before asking, "What did you do that for?"

House shrugged, "What fun would a good old-fashioned panty raid be without a few obstacles?" He snatched half of Wilson's sandwich off his plate before limping away.

******

As they travelled back through the clinic Cuddy stopped them and pulled aside all the fellows with real medical licenses to assist with the sudden massive influx of clinic patients. "But we have a patient," Kutner argued.

"Well, I'm sure it doesn't take eleven doctors to diagnose her. Besides, if House needs your help he'll come storming through here demanding your release. Until then, half of you can help out here," Cuddy ordered.

As the team continued on down the hall, JJ asked, "How can breast cancer cause problems in her brain?"

"There are molecular similarities between brain cells and tumor cells. Paraneoplastic Syndrome causes the body's antibodies to get thrown off track; they end up attacking the brain instead of the tumor," Reid explained.

As they got closer to the patient's room, Morgan smiled broadly and said, "Hey guys, wanna see a magic trick?"

Reid seemed enthused, "What kind of magic trick?"

"I call it: The Amazing Disappearing Rossi..." The others gave him skeptical looks. "You saw him..." Morgan explained, "Now you don't..." He gave a dramatic flourish of his hands for added effect.

They looked about for a minute and realized that Rossi really was no longer with them. "Where did he go?" JJ asked.

"The patient is his ex-wife," Hotch explained, "He doesn't want her to recognize him."

******

Emily and JJ were in the control room, in the process of giving the patient a mammogram. "I'm sorry, I know it's uncomfortable," JJ reassured her, "But the tighter we go, the better the image will be." Turning to Emily while the scanner started up, she asked, "So, what's going on between you and Morgan?"

Emily's demeanor instantly froze over, "Nothing."

JJ scoffed, "Yeah right! You're pissed at him, he's pissed at you, and he's wishing the brunt of the Spanish Inquisition on Dr. Foreman... Spill."

"It's nothing!" Emily hissed, a little harsher than she had intended. Or not.

JJ took the hint that it was a bit of a sore spot and was quiet for several moments before asking, "So, did you really kiss Dr. Foreman?"

"JJ, really?" she sighed exasperatedly. She clicked on the microphone and assured the patient, "Don't worry, it's almost over."

"I wish people would stop telling me not to worry," the patient said.

Emily was a little taken aback. "I'm sorry.

"My mom was the same age..." she said.

"A lot has changed since your mom died. Don't worr-" she caught herself at the last second, "Don't give up."

******

Once the others had finished with the MRI, they went to give House the news, whether good or bad depended on the perspective. "No tumor?" House asked, "And where are your cohorts?"

"Dr. Cuddy cornered them and dragged them off to help in the 'mysteriously' overcrowded clinic," Hotch explained, hooking air quotes around the sarcasm.

"The MRI and mammogram showed only a few benign calcifications," JJ answered the first question.

"It's most likely a small cell tumor," Foreman said, "It's no surprise we're having trouble finding it. We should do a PET scan, start with her lungs and maybe her bones."

"Maybe there is no tumor," House mused.

"So if it's not paraneoplastic, what is it?" Morgan asked.

"Sometimes it presents with no tumor," House said, "Twelve percent of cases."

"How do you treat it if there's no tumor?" Emily asked.

"You don't. Those twelve percent have no treatment. They were too busy looking for the tumor right until they put the patient in the ground."

"What choice do we have?" Foreman asked.

"Treat the symptoms," House said, "IV immunoglobulin."

"So we're just going to ignore the tumor?" Reid asked.

"Eventually it'll get bigger," House shrugged, "Then it'll be really easy to find. In the mean time, we need to check out where she works."

"Why?" Hotch asked, hoping this wasn't going to wind up with one of them committing a felony... again.

"Because the husband's not sick. If it's not paraneoplastic and it _is _a reaction to some kind of toxin, it's obviously not coming from their home." He looked at each of them in turn, apparently considering, before commanding, "Foreman, Morgan, you do it."

******

Over a game of fooseball, Wilson quizzed House, "So, when are the games gonna be over?"

House scoffed, "How long have you known me? I have my fellows on a mission to steal Cuddy's unmentionables..."

Wilson shook his head, laughing slightly, "You're right; let me rephrase, who are you going to keep?"

"I really don't think there's any bad apples in this bushel. Let's see... They robbed a grave for me, there's the guy who set a patient on fire and electrocuted himself..."

"Got drunk on the job," Wilson added for him, "Lied to everyone and their dog..."

"That reminds me," House said, "One of them _did_ kill a dog... And its owner.

"You're right," Wilson said, rolling his eyes, "A stand-up bunch of medical and ethical role models..."

"Do I detect a touch of sarcasm?" Just then, House's pager sounded. He pulled it from his pocket and read the message. "Nurse's station, patient emergency." He immediately returned to the game.

"Aren't you going to go see what the emergency is?"

The ball rattled into Wilson's net, seeing as he was still standing dumbfounded. "That's what I have fellows for," House shrugged, "What did you think I was having them do? Wash my car? Because that would just be a waste of brilliant medical minds."

"I thought your fellows were all preoccupied in the clinic with the great mayonnaise panic of 2009," he said as he dropped the ball at centre.

"Well, all the ones that weren't busy washing my car..."

******

One by one, the team converged on their patient's ward. "You got House's page too?" Reid asked the others.

They nodded. "Did he say what the emergency is?" Hotch asked. No one knew.

"It's really quiet up here," JJ noted.

"That's because any doctor that can be spared is downstairs dealing with House's condiment crisis," Rossi said, stopping just short of the nurse's station.

The others stopped when they got to the patient's room. They found her to be sleeping peacefully, none of her monitors showing any signs of distress. "There's no emergency..." Emily said suspiciously, "She's completely fine."

"Maybe House is just trying to screw with us," Reid suggested, "Wouldn't be the first time..."

All of a sudden there was an explosive noise worthy of _Mythbusters_. The entire team backed against the wall, grabbing at their hips for the weapons that no longer occupied their accustomed place. They waited, tensed, for another explosion, but none came. No one screamed in pain, no walls crumbled, no flames erupted. The air was filled with a fine cloud of dust for several moments before the air cleared and their vision was once again unobstructed.

"What the hell was that?" JJ asked when she recovered from the shock. No one had an answer.

They were in the process of trying to find the source of the noise when there was the shrill sound of an alarm and the overhead paging system proclaimed, "Code Pink!" The doors to the unit sealed themselves and the air ventilation system hummed to a stop.

"What the hell is going on?" Hotch demanded of a nearby nurse.

"Code pink means a biohazard contamination," the nurse squeaked nervously.

"The cloud of dust from the explosion," Rossi said, realization crossing his face, "The explosion must have released some kind of bio-agent into the air!"

Hotch turned back to the nurse, "You'd better revise that code pink to a code zebra."

"Bioterrorism alert?" she asked, all color draining from her face. Hotch nodded. "Oh, dear God..."

A/N: From now on, you can expect the chapters to be a fair bit shorter than these last few have been, seeing as we're now back on my original track for the story, i.e. writing completely from my own design. Hope it's been awesome so far, I'm hoping that it only get better from here...


	9. Poison

_I will apply, for the benefit of the sick, all measures which are required, avoiding those twin traps of overtreatment and therapeutic nihilism.  
- Hippocratic Oath_

*****

Foreman and Morgan were inspecting the restaurant where the patient worked, looking for something that could have caused her to become ill. While Foreman looked for toxins or gas leaks or unsanitary conditions, Morgan quizzed her boss. "How long has she worked here?" he asked.

"Three years," her boss answered, the stereotypical French chef, "She's my best rotisseur."

"What's that?"

"The rotisseur prepares the roasted meats and gravies," Jacques replied.

"How do you clean your grill?"

He said something in French, then searched for the English equivalent, "They say elbow grease."

"Do you use chemical cleaners?"

"No, absolutely no. Our chefs don't do the cleaning anyway."

"What about pesticides? You must spray for roaches and that sort of thing."

"Nope, my kitchen is clean, no roaches. I need to get back to work."

At that point, Foreman strode over. "And the fact that we're here asking you these questions doesn't worry you?" he asked skeptically.

"Look at me," Jacques sighed, "I'm here eighteen hours a day. That guy practically lives here," he said, indicating another chef. "He does live here," he added, pointing to yet another chef. "I use the same detergents for fifteen years and everyone is healthy as a horse. Whatever she has, she didn't get here. Tell her I hope she feels better and I had to get a new rotisseur."

"Well, that was..." Foreman started to say as Jacques returned to work. He was cut off by Morgan's phone ringing.

He ducked out of the conversation, glad of an excuse to ignore him. "Hotch, what's up?" He listened intently as Hotch told him what was happening, his face becoming more serious with each passing minute. "Are you serious?" he asked, hardly able to believe what he was hearing; if it were anyone else but Hotch, he might have thought it were a joke. "How the hell did _all_ of you manage to be in the blast zone?" he asked. After another minute of determined silence, he nodded and said, "Okay, we'll be right there."

He shut his phone and turned back to Foreman. "We need to get back to the hospital right now," he said seriously.

"I haven't finished looking around here," Foreman said, shaking his head, "House will have our asses on a platter if we miss something. Whatever it is, it can wait."

Morgan gritted his teeth and resisted the urge to utter a few choice swears. "No, it can't."

"What could possibly be so important that it can't wait a few more minutes?" he asked rather brusquely.

"How about the fact that your _girlfriend _is trapped in a locked-down ward where an unknown and likely dangerous bioagent was just released into the air?" he hissed.

A deer-in-the-headlights look crossed his face and he was momentarily frozen. His pager went off and he read off under his breath, "Code zebra..." He looked up at Morgan, shocked. Morgan said nothing, but his expression clearly read, _'I told you so!'_

******

"House, get in here _now_!" Cuddy demanded from outside her office.

"Oh, I can't," he shrugged, "You know me, never one to shirk my clinic duty, especially in such a time of mass panic." Not that he was actually working, but rather playing his _Gameboy _behind the nurse's station.

Cuddy glared at him. "I _wasn't asking_," she hissed.

House sighed exasperatedly and rolled his eyes, but followed Cuddy into her office. Assembled there were Wilson, Chase, Cameron, Amber, Taub, Kutner, 13, and Cole. "Staging an intervention?" House asked.

"Now, I'm sure you probably missed it, being so wrapped up in your own little world, but if you took one second to take your head out of your ass, you might have heard that there was a _bioterrorist attack _on your patient's ward _and _that five of your fellows were there at the time!" Cuddy berated.

"Really? Is that what that meant? I thought they'd gotten confused, thought this was a zoo," House remarked sarcastically. Cuddy shot him a glacial glare. "What did you want me to do?" House asked, "In case you didn't get the memo, my super powers don't work during the full moon."

"You're not concerned that we could have massive casualties on our hands in the matter of a few hours? And that the only people who might be able to tell us what the poison is could be among the dead?" Wilson asked.

House shrugged, "That's why I had to have so many fellows, take a lesson from the sea turtles."

"Being more insensitive and careless about human life than usual won't get you out of helping," Cuddy snapped. She started dialling the nurse's station on the locked-down ward, asking for the nurse who answered to let her speak to one of Dr. House's fellows.

"Where's Foreman?" House asked, "Why doesn't he have to help?"

"He and Morgan are on their way back," Hotch answered, having caught the question.

"Is anyone showing symptoms?" Cuddy asked.

"No one's gotten any worse..." he answered.

"Is haz-mat on their way?" Rossi asked, his voice filtering through the speakerphone.

"Umm," Cuddy stammered uncomfortably, "They won't come onto the ward because they don't want to risk contaminating the rest of the hospital. Before they'll do anything we need to figure out what the toxin is."

It was Hotch's turn to become uncomfortable. "That might be a bit of a problem..."

"I know," Cuddy cut him off before he could say anything else, already knowing what he meant, "Don't worry, we're going to do everything we can to help you."

There was the distant sound of screaming as the patient scratched at her arm and tried to brush off non-existent creepy-crawlies. "Oh my God! Get them off! Someone, get them off of me!"

"Calm down!" Emily said desperately, trying to get her to calm down, "There's nothing there! I need some Haldol, five milligrams," she called to the nurses.

"Oh," Hotch added, "And there's still the small matter of the patient who is now hallucinating bugs on her skin."

A/N: I just have to address my gratitude to _AiyanaStone_,_ Caramel Tart_, _Confetti Leaves_, _ForeverMeansAlways_, and _lovely-whisper_. They have all put up with me and very selflessly offered their opinions and ideas concering the plot of this story. It is safe to say that it wouldn't be half as good without their guidance. So thank you a million times over!


	10. Locked In

"So what do we do now?" Emily asked, the gravity of the situation really hitting home upon learning that no help was coming, the team of profilers was the first and only line of defence.

"Our best and possibly only chance at figuring out what bioagent was in the bomb is to identify House's would-be assassin," Hotch said, "Reid, JJ, you look after the patient. We need to know the second any of the patients start showing new symptoms. The rest of us will work on the profile."

"How do we know that this was an attempt on House's life and not a random attack, terrorist or otherwise?" JJ asked.

"We don't, but what are the chances that the two would coincide so neatly?" Hotch answered. Reid opened his mouth to recite the statistics of such an event, but Hotch preemptively stopped him with a raised hand and a sigh of, "Rhetorical question, Reid."

"Did we ever stop to think that maybe House knew something was going to happen?" Emily asked suddenly.

Everyone turned to look at her questioningly. "What would make you say that?" Rossi asked.

"Well, House gets a page from someone who obviously wants him to be in the blast zone, but instead of answering it himself he sends his fellows? That seems a little suspicious to me..."

"House doesn't answer the vast majority of pages, this isn't exactly new behaviour," Reid said.

"No, he screens calls, not pages."

"House may be a lot of things, but he's not evil," JJ said, "Most of the time..."

******

"Why are we here exactly?" Amber asked disdainfully.

"We need to identify the toxin," Cuddy snapped rather impatiently.

"They just said no one's showing any symptoms yet," Taub said, "Which means there's nothing we can do."

"Well then, in the mean time, you can diagnose the patient you still have."

"Why do you even need us?" Amber asked, "There are five doctors already on the ward. Ones that have the ability to run tests, physically interact with the patients, while we can do nothing. What more could _we _possibly do?"

"The fact that there's a major emergency risking mass casualties in the hospital isn't enough for you?" 13 asked.

Amber's expression made it clear that it wasn't; clearly, there were more important things she could be doing, especially when the ones at risk were her competition for her job.

******

"Reid, what are you doing?" JJ asked, standing back and watching him, an eyebrow raised questioningly.

Reid looked back at her over his shoulder, then back at the wall where he was scrawling in large letters: seizures, fever, elevated SED rate, hypersomnia, personality changes, creepy-crawly sensation. "I'm listing the patient's symptoms, that way we can use them to diagnose her and be able to differentiate new symptoms originating from the toxin."

"That's permanent marker, you know," she pointed out, looking at the thick black letters.

He shrugged, "I didn't have washable markers or anything else to write on..."

"What about the windows where it would wash off? The ward is only, what, like sixty percent glass?"

Again he shrugged, "Guess I didn't think of that." He paused to examine his list before looking up sharply and asking, "What's taking Morgan so long?"

"He's already back, Hotch just talked to him," JJ said.

"I didn't hear the phone ring..."

JJ rolled her eyes, "It rang two separate times. It was Morgan the first time, Foreman the second. Em's talking to him right now."

"Is it just me or is there something weird going on with her and Morgan?" Reid asked.

"Please tell me you're not _just _picking up on that," JJ said.

"No..." he said unconvincingly.

"The 'official' position," she said, punctuating the phrase with air quotes, "Is that there's nothing going on... But if you ask me, Morgan is jealous because Em, at the very least, kissed Dr. Foreman. But for God's sake, do _not _bring it up with either of them!"

"But... What..." he stammered.

"How about we stay focused so we don't all die and I'll explain everything later."

******

"Are you sure..." Foreman started to ask.

"I'm fine," Emily repeated, trying to sound annoyed, but secretly pleased that he was so worried about her. It had been awhile since someone cared so much. Before he could once again repeat his line of questioning, she added, "If there's anyone I'd trust to figure out what the toxin is, it would be you."

He smiled brightly, before becoming totally serious, "Just in case something happens, I want you to know... I love you."

"Don't say that," Emily scolded half-heartedly, "Nothing's going to happen. Then you can tell me in person." She felt her heart flip-flop in her chest; it had been even longer since someone had said that to her and meant it. She wanted to say the same back, but she wanted to be sure that she really did _love _him and wouldn't be saying it as a reaction to the very real danger she was presently in.

"I can't promise I won't worry, but I'd feel a lot better if I knew there was a kiss waiting for me..."

If looks could kill, Foreman would have been dead a hundred times over. Morgan standing nearby, eavesdropping on his conversation, staring daggers at him. His near-boiling blood threatened to erupt when he heard him say those three words and he would have given anything to be able to hear what she said in response. Did she say it back? On second thought though, he decided that it was probably better that he didn't hear it, because he wasn't sure he could handle her saying she loved him.

A/N: Whoa... It took like forever and three days to get this chapter written. I'm super sorry for the long wait! I hope it was at least worth it...


	11. Top Secret

Amber leaned against the wall, haughtily watching as House listed the patient's symptoms while Cuddy breathed down his neck, making sure that he did her bidding. "Creepy-crawlies are consistent with paraneoplastic syndrome," Wilson pointed out.

"Not immediately after administering IVIG," Amber said.

"Infection," House said.

"They'd have thought of that," Amber said, rolling her eyes, "Why are we even here? This is the biggest waste of time, they can handle this without us."

"Fine." Cuddy glared at her and heaved a sigh. "You all need to be here because..." she hesitated, knowing that this would be paramount to scandal; House especially would lose it, knowing that she had intentionally undermined him and placed moles in his group of fellows. "Because none of the people that are on that ward are doctors..."

******

"What made you page Dr. House?" Hotch asked one of the nurses at the nurses' station, "Was the patient in some kind of distress?"

The young woman was flustered and highly anxious, she hardly looked a year out of nursing school. "Umm... no," she stammered, "She was actually doing really well, seemed better than she had been doing since being admitted. That's why it seemed so weird..."

"What seemed weird?" Hotch pressed.

"He came to the nurses' desk and told us to page Dr. House, tell him his patient was in distress. When we said she was fine and that we could probably handle it without House, he got really angry and said that we should do what we're told."

"Who?"

"I didn't think he still worked here, but he was wearing hospital-issue scrubs and he had hospital I.D. I figured he knew what was best, he is a doctor after all..."

"_Who_?"

******

"_None of them are doctors_?" House repeated incredulously. The rest of the doctors remained frozen, varying degrees of disbelief on their faces, some completely shocked, others almost as if they had suspected. Morgan, for his part, sheepishly avoided eye contact and sincerely hoped that the others were close to figuring out who the unsub is because their cover had just been blown to shards.

"Then who are they?" asked Wilson.

Cuddy looked to Morgan who almost imperceptibly nodded, they may as well know the truth now. "FBI agents with the BAU gone undercover," she told them, leaving out why.

Foreman looked absolutely astonished to learn that Emily wasn't who he thought she was or at least, not completely. Morgan could see from his expression that he was devastated to learn that she hadn't trusted him enough to tell him the truth. And as terrible as it sounded, he couldn't help but be pleased that she hadn't confided in her 'boyfriend'.

It took him a few moments to realize that, while he had been revelling in his schadenfreude, everyone in the room had turned to look at him. And suddenly, he felt inexplicably angry and, now that he didn't have a cover to protect, he finally said what was on his mind. "I sure hope you can figure this out," he said to House, "Because otherwise, their blood will be on _your_ hands."

******

"She most likely has some kind of infection," Reid told the others his rough differential, "But seeing as the labs almost exclusively rule out all bacteria, viruses, and parasites..."

"Almost," Rossi noted, "So there's a chance it still might be?"

"If it is, it isn't in her blood or a common one."

"We should have seen this," Hotch muttered to himself, rejoining the others.

"What is it?" Emily asked.

"We were right there with him for weeks, how did we miss it?"

"Miss what?" Emily asked. It wasn't very often that something managed to throw Hotch for a loop like this, so they knew that what ever it was they had missed, it was something major.

He started to answer, but stopped and looked at Reid questioningly. "Are you alright?" he asked.

"Yeah... I'm fine. Why?" he asked, an eyebrow raised.

"You just look really flushed... Are you sure you're okay?"

"Yeah, I'm..." he started to say, but stopped, bringing a hand to his head and started to wobble. He would have fallen to the ground if Emily's quick thinking hadn't immediately produced a wheel chair at his side.

Sitting him down, she used the back of her hand as a rough gauge of temperature. "Oh my God," she breathed, "You're burning up!" She looked up to Hotch and Rossi ominously and said, "I do believe we have our first patient..."


	12. Epic Fail

_I will prevent disease whenever I can, for prevention is preferable to cure.  
- Hippocratic Oath_

*****

"Pick up, pick up, pick up," Emily breathed, holding the phone up to her ear, waiting for someone to answer. Hotch and Rossi were busy hooking Reid up to various machines to monitor his vital signs, with the nurses' help.

"What?" House snapped, answering the phone.

Cuddy, clearly annoyed, snatched the phone from him and set it on speakerphone. "What's going on?" she asked, concerned, "Any changes?"

"Dr. Reid just fell ill," Emily replied ominously.

"We know you aren't doctors," Amber said, her tone clearly revealing that she was rolling her eyes.

"Technically, Reid is a doctor," Morgan pointed out, "Just not a medical one."

"High fever, severe weakness, exhaustion, dizziness, sore throat, muscle and joint pain," Emily listed, reminding everyone that someone could be dying.

"He just has the flu," House said dismissively.

"You can't discount symptoms just because they aren't interesting," Cuddy told him, "You know as well as I do that there are a hundred other things that it could be based on those symptoms alone." She gave him an icy glare before snatching the white-board marker from him and tossing it to Cameron to write down the symptoms induced by the toxin. Turning back to the phone, she said to Emily, "We're going to work on identifying what the poison might be, let us know should any new symptoms arise. Give him a dose of oseltamivir, in case it really is the flu. And I want you to keep him in isolation so the infection won't spread to anyone else; no one treats him, no one even goes into his room, without a prophylactic suit. Understood?"

"Absolutely." As she hung up, Hotch and Rossi were coming out of Reid's room. "We're under isolation orders for Reid," she told them, "We can't go into his room without a biohazard suit." To the nurse's she added, "We need a dose of oseltamivir."

"We are _so_in over our heads..." Rossi muttered.

******

"What about African Trypanosomiasis?" House suggested.

"He doesn't have any of the symptoms," Taub said.

"Not Reid, he means the original patient," 13 corrected.

"She's never been to Africa," Cameron said.

"She could have gotten it from a transfusion," Cole argued.

Cameron shook her head. "Never had one."

"Toxins?" Kutner suggested.

"No," Foreman said, "The kitchen she works in is cleaner than some hospitals. But it does serve rabbit. Tularemia fits."

"She doesn't have a rash or an ulcer at the infection site," Amber disputed.

"Wouldn't present if she inhaled it; chopping infected meat could easily aerosolize the bacteria."

"No respiratory symptoms..." Amber argued.

"Two lousy ideas..." House mused, "Treatment for tularemia can cause aplastic anemia, treatment for sleeping sickness kills one in ten patients..."

"We should start with the safer treament," Cameron said.

"By 'safer', you mean the one that's slightly less likely to kill her?" House asked.

"Do it," Cuddy said, "Call the ward, instruct them how to administer the doxycycline."

"What about Reid?" Morgan pressed, aggravated.

******

JJ silently cursed early mornings and profilers. She should know better than to decide something among them with rock, paper, scissors. As it was, she had been the lucky one elected to give the patient the early dose of her tularemia treatment. "Two down, two to go," she told the patient as she sat down to make sure that she stayed upright for the next thirty minutes.

"Two days?" she asked hopefully.

"Two doses. You have about twenty more days of this fun."

"What time is it?" she asked groggily.

"About four in the morning. I drew the short straw."

The patient mumbled something incoherent, her eyes slowly fluttering shut. She startled JJ when, a few seconds later, her eyes flew open again and she asked, "What time is it?"

"Four AM," she repeated, eyeing her suspiciously, "Don't you remember just asking?"

"I don't know..." she trailed off, slumping back into the bed, no longer responsive.

JJ began calling her name, shaking her gently.

In the next room over, Reid was shouting for help. The commotion had woken the rest of the team; they looked from one patient to the next, trying to determine what to do. Reid had blood seeping from his nose and seemed to be panicking.

"JJ, what's going on?" Hotch asked.

"Trying to wake her up," she said through gritted teeth, glancing back and forth between the patient and the pulse monitor. "She fell asleep in the middle of a sentence..."

"Go help JJ," Emily told the others, "I can take care of Reid." She sprinted to suit up, while Hotch moved to check the patient's vital signs. Rossi hovered hesitantly, glancing from one room to the other, eventually deciding on getting a nurse.

"Pulse is fine," Hotch said, "Airway clear. Check her blood pressure." While she did that, he shone a light in the patient's eyes, adding, "Pupils are reactive."

JJ tightened the pulse oximeter on the patient's finger to test her pain response. "She's not responsive to pain!"

Hotch backed away from the bed, there was nothing further they could do for her now without first consulting House. "She's in a coma."

In the silence that ensued, they could once again hear Reid shouting. "Help!" Hotch and JJ both went sprinting into the decontamination room to see what was wrong.

Emily was struggling to remain standing, clutching at the wall with one hand. The other was pinching the bridge of her nose shut while a blood streamed from it to pool on the floor. When she met their eyes, they were met with an uncharacteristic fear.

"It's spreading..." JJ said breathlessly, trying not to panic herself.


	13. Human Error

_I will remember that I do not treat a fever chart, a cancerous growth, but a sick human being; whose illness may affect the person's family and economic stability. My responsibility includes these related problems, if I am to care adequately for the sick.  
- Hippocratic Oath_

*****

"Between 1974 and 1995, the rate of MRSA infections in intensive care units rose from two to twenty-two percent. It rose an additional forty-two percent by 2004, showing that, although hospitals are aware of the problem, they are either ignoring it or there is very little they..."

"I sure hope being deathly ill has mellowed you out a little, because I swear to God, if you're going to be spouting random facts the whole time we're locked up in here, I'll be forced to perform experimental surgery on you..."

Right about now, Emily was starting to wonder what the chances of her infecting everyone else really were... It couldn't be _that _much more than their risk from the air alone and right now, anything was looking better than being quarantined with Reid.

"I'm sorry. I'll try to tone it down." She shot him a look and gave a nervous squeak. "I'll try _really _hard."

"Good idea." After several minutes of silence, she quietly asked, "Do you think they'll figure it out in time?" He nodded. She narrowed her eyes in suspicion. "Do you really? Or are you just saying that to make me feel better?"

He evaded answering directly, "Do you really want to know or do you want to be happy?"

Through the glass wall, they could see Hotch pacing back and forth, obviously under tremendous stress, as he spoke on the phone with House. "Who do you think is freaking out more, Hotch or Cuddy?" Emily asked. Reid gave a snort of laughter.

******

"I realize it takes time, but we don't really _have_ time... I've got two agents hemorrhaging massively and no explanation why," Hotch vented, trying to maintain his patience.

"We're doing our best, but as terrible as it sounds, the only sure way we can narrow down the list of possible conditions is to have them develop more symptoms..."

Clearly, that answer wasn't acceptable. Hotch let out a slow breath, his annoyance just barely staying under the surface.

"We'll call you back when we have an answer," Cuddy promised, "Just... try not to worry."

"Malaria!" Hotch heard someone say before he could hang up.

"I didn't think that was a disease that could be used as a bio-weapon," Hotch argued, "Doesn't it require contact with infected blood?" He wanted a diagnosis, but he felt like they were just grasping at straws.

"The symptoms fit," Wilson pointed out.

"Give them a dose of chloroquine," House said.

Hotch was still a little on the fence, "Shouldn't we test them for it first?"

"There isn't time," House said, "If we're wrong, the fastest way to tell will be through whether or not the treatment works."

"Fine," Hotch said, although his tone made it clear that he wasn't happy about how this was transpiring.

"What's the answer this time?" Reid asked when Hotch and Rossi, both suited up, entered the room with two new IV bags.

"Malaria," Rossi said before Hotch could say anything that might betray his disbelief in the idea. He was sure that what Reid and Emily needed was to have faith in the doctors and their diagnoses, not succumb to unfounded stress over the possibility that the drugs might actually make them worse. He shot a warning look at Hotch not to say anything else.

After first connecting Emily's IV, they moved to hook up Reid's. But they barely had the bag hung when Emily gave a frightened whimper. "I can't see!"

"What?"

"My vision's cloudy and my eye really hurts..."

"Damn!"

******

"An overdose of chloroquine can cause toxicity in the eye," Cameron pointed out.

"But not that quickly," Chase said, "And the dose was right."

"For her pre-admission weight, she could have lost enough weight since then to skew the numbers."

"That much, that fast? I don't think so."

"What if it's a new symptom?" Thirteen suggested, "There can't be very many hemorrhagic fevers that also cause conjunctivitis."

Morgan huffed, his patience was wearing thin. "We don't have time to keep guessing at this! You have to keep waiting for them to get sicker before you can come up with anything? You're playing roulette with their lives! The unsub obviously intended to kill, who knows what he put in that bio-bomb? Every hour you wait could be their last!" It took all his self-restraint not to put his fist through the wall as he stormed out of the office.

******

"I thought you'd forgotten about me!"

"We're sorry, Garcia... But things have been..." JJ trailed off, her vocabulary lacking an adequate adjective.

"Is it true?"

"Is what true?"

"Was there really a bioterrorism threat at the hospital?"

"How did you find out about that?" Hotch interrupted.

"Are you kidding? The media is having a field day over this," Garcia admonished. "What do you need?"

"We need you to play doctor," JJ said.

"I thought that was _your _job..."

"It was... Well, is... But we need your help. Long story short, we need you to find a disease that causes flu-like symptoms, hemorrhaging, and conjunctivitis."

"You'll know when I know," she said brightly, happy to finally have something to do.

"Oh," Hotch added before she could hang up, "Can you also look up anything we've got on Dr. Travis Brennan."

"Why?" Rossi asked, once Garcia had hung up.

"Didn't I tell you? He's our unsub."


	14. Dying Changes Everything

_I will not use the knife, not even on sufferers from stone, but will withdraw in favor of such men as are engaged in this work.  
- Hippocratic Oath_

*****

"What the hell are you doing?" Foreman demanded, storming after Morgan.

"Clearly, there's nothing I can do here since all you're doing is killing time. If I have to stand back and watch as my best friend dies, I sure as hell won't be spending those last few minutes down here with you!"

"I sure hope you're talking about the skinny kid, because if you're talking about my girlfriend..."

"She's not your girlfriend! She's just interested in you to spite me!"

He narrowed his eyes into a dangerous glare. "You're being irrational. You can't go onto the ward, it's under lock-down."

"I don't care," he retorted, each word slow and weighted. "You're the one being irrational! You said you love her and you're worried about procedures and rules? You're going to stay down here while she's alone and dying?"

"No! I'm staying down here so I can find the answer and cure her so she won't die!"

"You don't love her and you never did!"

He had been expecting a snapped reply of, 'Well, she doesn't love you!' Instead, the next thing he knew, a fist came sharply into contact with his jaw.

******

"So what _do _you guys know about Dr. Brennan?" Garcia asked. It was clear that she was wondering how, after all the time they spent working with him, they had failed to identify him as the unsub sooner.

"Not much, actually," JJ admitted, "He worked with Doctors Without Borders."

"For eight years," Garcia qualified.

"He moved back to the city and applied for the fellowship because he got engaged," Rossi added. That was more or less the extent of their knowledge.

Garcia added on, "Graduated from Johns-Hopkins, specializing in epidemiology. He spent most of the eight years practicing in Africa. He appears to be one of the more vocal members, actively speaking out against the lack of care many third world people receive, despite having been told to tone it down. He was also one of the major players behind the establishment of the Campaign for Access to Essential Medicines."

"Yeah," Hotch commented, "He was constantly railing against the way developed countries waste drugs while most people still suffer from diseases that have been cured and eradicated from the first world."

"Did you also know that he has an outstanding arrest warrant?"

"For poisoning a patient," Rossi finished.

"Yeah..."

"He was giving a patient thallium because its symptoms mimic polio and he wanted to prove that vitamin C can cure polio in order to make companies do research to find a cheap, alternative cure that can readily be used in third world countries," JJ explained for Garcia.

"And, for bonus points," Garcia continued, "While he was working in Sierra Leone, he and several of the other doctors in his corps were held hostage by a radical militant group."

"Well, PTSD would explain his psychosis," Hotch noted, "But it doesn't explain why he would want to kill House."

"Garcia," JJ asked, "Is there any record of Brennan being connected to someone who died in House's care? A relative or a girlfriend, maybe?"

They waited with bated breath as she searched House's patient records. "A gold star for JJ," Garcia said brightly, "Fourteen years ago, House treated Ester Doyle, Brennan's grandmother, who died within twenty-four hours of being admitted."

"That's got the be the stressor," Rossi said, "He stews over his grandmother's death for fourteen years, gets held hostage and suffers a post-traumatic break from reality and decides to exact revenge on the doctor responsible for her death."

"I've also..." Garcia started to say, but was interrupted by shouts.

"Help! He's seizing!" Emily yelled, then started coughing heavily. She tried to shout for help again, but couldn't because of the coughing fit, so she repeatedly pressed the call button to attract attention from the nurses.

"We'll call you back, Garcia," JJ said quickly as she ran to suit up.

"Wait! What's going on?" But her words fell on deaf ears as JJ set the phone down, thinking she had hung up. But in the clamouring to put on the prophylactic suit, she had missed the button and Garcia listened on in horror to the drama unfolding in the isolation room.

"What happened?" Hotch demanded.

"He just became unresponsive. His eyes rolled back in his head and he started to seize..."

"We need a dose of clonazepam," Rossi said as he attempted to stabilize Reid. JJ sprinted over the the crash cart to get a dose of the anti-seizure drug.

They finally managed to get his seizing to stop, his vital signs slowly started to stabilize, but he remained unconscious. Only when Emily spoke did they remember she was there. "Is he alright?" she asked through shallow, labored breathing.

They all turned to look at her to see her clutching at her chest, each breath clearly an immense struggle. "Emily, are you okay?" JJ asked.

"I... I can't breathe..." she rasped out.

"It'll be okay," Rossi reassured, though he was sure of no such thing, "Just lay back and we'll put you on oxygen."

As they prepped the oxygen, her heart rate started to climb exponentially. "One-eighty," Hotch called out, "Two-twenty! We need an amper-vepi! She's going to stroke out!"

"Get the crash-cart!" JJ called, "She's crashing!"

******

The next thing Foreman knew, he had his back against the wall, Morgan's hand around his throat. "I'm going to make this real easy for you..." Morgan said slowly, dangerously. "You leave Emily alone and I won't have to hurt you. After this case is over, you never speak to her again, you never even think about her again. Do I make myself clear?"

Foreman struggled against his grip, trying to push him away. "You can't tell me to..."

Morgan cut him off, "I suggest you think long and hard about your answer..."

"Is that a threat?"

"Yes," he said simply. "Now, are you going to leave her alone or are we going to have to do this the hard way?"

Shooting him the coldest death glare he had ever seen, Foreman spat, "Fine! Nothing's worth this."

"That's what I thought." Morgan pulled his hand away and Foreman had to grip the wall to stop himself from falling to the floor. As he started to walk away, Morgan called after him, "You're wrong. Emily is worth this. And if you really did love her, you would know that..."

A/N: Remember Ester? Just in case you don't, she was the woman alluded to in the episode "All In", where House treats the young boy who has the same symptoms as an elderly woman he treated many years ago (it was twelve in season two, but the fellowship occured in season four). I thought that would be a good way to have Brennan have a pre-existing connection to House. And, obviously, I had to make up much of the back-story for Brennan because we knew so little about him.


	15. One Day, One Room

_I will remember that there is art to medicine as well as science and that warmth, sympathy, and understanding may outweigh the surgeon's knife or the chemist's drug.  
- Hippocratic Oath_

*****

"Seizures, trouble breathing, chest pain, tachycardia," Hotch listed to the doctors, "This thing is moving too fast for us to get ahead of it. We need a diagnosis and fast or they _will _die..."

And then he hung up. He had no inclination to listen to anyone make excuses or try to tell him that things were going to be okay if they were just patient because he had been patient and things were most definitely _not _okay. They would phone back when they had an answer or not at all.

He didn't really have a spare moment to dwell on that though, because right away he was startled from his thoughts by a series of noises, a buzz signalling a door being unarmed, and the slow mechanical whirring of the ward's doors sliding back to allow someone admittance.

He turned sharply to see who had ignored the emergency procedures and wasn't at all surprised when he saw who it was. In fact, he was surprised that it had taken until now for him to break the rules. "Morgan, what are you doing here?" he asked nonetheless.

"I came to make things right," he said simply. He seemed about to brush past him, but he stopped himself. "Hotch, man, are you okay?"

"Yeah, why?"

"Your nose is bleeding..."

******

"Maybe we should work this from a different direction," Taub suggested.

"What do you mean?" Wilson asked.

"Well, we've been working this in the same way we would work any other diagnostic, but that's far too wide a spectrum. This has already been narrowed down for us, we should isolate our diagnoses to pathogens that are known to be or were being tested as bioweapons."

"He's right," Kutner said.

"No need to sound so surprised," Taub interrupted.

"We should also consider which specific ones are more easily accessible and weaponized," Kutner continued unfazed, "Anthrax, botulism, tularemia, Q fever, and staph EB are all diseases that have successfully been weaponized."

"It's not staph," Chase said, "The symptoms would be almost exclusively abdominal if that were the case."

"Botulism doesn't fit," Cameron added, "No muscle weakness in the face."

"Anthrax, tularemia, and Q fever all fit," Cuddy said.

"Start with Q fever," House said definitively.

"Are you sure?" Cuddy asked seriously, "Because we don't have time to be wrong."

******

Morgan stood hesitantly in the antechamber to the clean room, suddenly nervous now that he was actually about to go through with it. His heart was pounding like a jackhammer and his stomach felt like it was about to leap out of his mouth.

Would she still be mad? He had been such a jerk, he wouldn't blame her if she never wanted to speak to him again. But he had to try to make some kind of peace with her. He didn't want the last words he ever spoke to her to be ones of anger.

He took one last deep breath, shutting his eyes and steeling his nerves, then entered the clean room, not even bothering with the protective suit. Standing at her bedside, he quietly spoke, "Emily?" He waited for several seconds, but she didn't respond. "Emily?" he said again, this time gently placing his hand on her shoulder.

Slowly, she turned to look at him with a lost, frightened gaze, her eyes brimming with barely withheld tears. She tried to say something, but was hindered by the oxygen mask over her mouth and nose and the tube keeping her trachea open.

"You don't have to say anything," he said softly, "I came here to apologize." He reached out and took her hand in his, slowly tracing his thumb back and forth over her knuckles.

For a split second, he said nothing, suddenly feeling very unsure and awkward. He looked up momentarily to where Hotch lay, sleeping for probably the first time since the case had started, dried blood still stained his hospital gown; it was probably the weakest he had ever seen the unit chief. Then his gaze fell on Reid, still unconscious, barely hanging on.

That was all he needed to push past the discomfort; it had to be said and it had to be now... "I never meant to hurt you," he said suddenly, hoping that once the first words were out, everything else would just follow. "I know I was a complete jerk and you definitely didn't deserve to be treated like that. You were sad and frightened and vulnerable and I did nothing to help that. You just needed someone to listen, to care, and I guess I didn't take it well when I realized that that someone wasn't me. The truth is... The truth is, I over-reacted so badly because I was jealous. I was jealous that you had found comfort in someone else's arms."

He paused, looking intensely into her tear-filled eyes. He could tell that she knew what he was trying to say, but he needed to actually say the words, he needed it to be concrete, he needed to know for sure that she understood. "I love you..."

She shifted over in her bed, clearly indicating that she wanted him to lie down with her. He very carefully set himself down next to her, pulling her into his arms. Very gently, he used his thumb to smudge away the stray tears that had escaped to trickle down her cheeks. As she rested her head against his chest, he tenderly kissed the top of her head.

As they lay there in silence, her shallow breathing seemed to become all the more haunting. It was clear that they were both thinking that she might not have very much time left. Tears still ran slowly down her face.

"Don't cry," he whispered, "Everything will be okay."

Silently, he prayed those words would be true.


	16. Que Sera Sera

_If I do not violate this oath, may I enjoy life and art, respected while I live and remembered with affection thereafter. May I always act so as to preserve the finest traditions of my calling and may I long experience the joy of healing those who seek my help.  
- Hippocratic Oath_

*****

JJ wordlessly watched as Morgan pulled Emily into his arms, glad that things had worked out for the best. She just hoped that this wouldn't be the end, but the hope was dim. She finally tore her eyes away from the tender scene when she realized her phone was ringing. She called Rossi over and put it on speaker.

"What happened?" Garcia demanded, sounding as if she were near tears.

"Reid had a seizure, Emily went into cardiac arrest, and now Hotch is sick too," JJ listed.

There was momentary silence as she absorbed that information. "Well, I think I have an answer..."

"What?" Rossi said, hardly daring to believe it.

"I know what's wrong with them," she repeated. The others held their breath, hardly daring to believe that this ordeal might finally be over. "Lassa fever. I had it narrowed down to some kind of viral hemorrhagic fever, which is a fairly long list, even when isolated to ones tested as bioweapons. But then I remembered that Brennan had spent time in Sierra Leone, which is one of the few areas where there has been an outbreak."

"How is it treated?" Rossi asked.

"IV Ribavirin."

"Garcia, you're amazing," JJ breathed.

"Go save our friends," she prompted, dispensing with her usual reply to the compliment.

Just as they hung up and went to get three doses of the drug, the main phone rang. "Q fever," was the only thing House said when they picked up.

"What?" Rossi asked.

"Start treatment for Q fever," he repeated, "Doxycycline."

"No," Rossi said simply.

"What?" It was House's turn to be incredulous.

"We're treating for lassa fever."

"Did you come up with this diagnosis yourselves?" Cuddy asked.

"Yes," Rossi said, because it was simpler than explaining.

"Why?"

"The unsub spent time in Sierra Leone."

"It fits better," Cuddy said, nodding despite the fact that he couldn't see. "Treat for it." Hanging up, she turned to House with a raised eyebrow. "I hope you're happy. Three federal agents came up with the diagnosis before you did..."

"I taught them everything they know..." he said matter-of-factly.

******

"I'm so sorry about everything that happened," Cuddy apologized profusely to the team, "But I'm very grateful for everything you've done for us."

The entire team had been given a dose of ribavirin and decontaminated and Reid, Hotch, and Emily had been brought back to full health. Having wrapped up the case and having seen to it that Brennan was arrested and would receive all the punishment he had coming to him, they were finally ready to set out to return home.

"Well, except for the whole almost dying thing, it was actually kind of fun," Emily said with a smile. For a split second, she caught Foreman's eye and, when he didn't even return her smile, she realized that she didn't regret a thing. She tightened her grip on Morgan's hand, giving him a surreptitious smile which he returned brightly.

Cuddy turned to glare at House. "Isn't there something you'd like to say to them?"

"No."

She sighed exasperatedly and hissed, "You'll say it or I'll chain you inside the clinic and you'll spend the rest of your life treating clinic patients."

He waggled his eyebrows suggestively and murmured, "You know I'm always up for some chains..."

She continued to glare at him and demanded, "Say it."

He turned to the team and said, "Thanks for saving my ass... And taking a bioattack for me." Then, he actually smiled as he shook each of their hands.

"Wow," JJ whispered to Reid as they headed to the waiting SUVs that would take them back to the airport. "If I didn't know any better, I would have thought that he actually meant that..."


End file.
